Published: November 16, 2007 01:00 pm            

To angry letter-writer: Merry Christmas

It is hard to imagine the pain you felt when you wrote your Santa Fund letter.

But the hurt was there in every word you wrote. It screamed from the page, very real and very deep.

And your letter was so different from all the others – the hundreds of requests for compassion this holiday season.

You remember.

You sent your thoughts in an anonymous envelope. No return address. Block letters to obscure your handwriting.

Contained inside that envelope was the coupon you clipped from the pages of the newspaper – just like everybody else.

But it was your personal comments that struck me, the intensity with which you expressed your sense of the value of our Santa Fund program.

“Are you out of your f-ing mind?” you wrote. “Because these people are too f-ing lazy to work and pay for their own damn kids. Why are they ... making kids if they can’t afford them? No money! Screw you!”

I wish you truly understood.

I wish you could have read the other letters that came in, seeking holiday gifts for children whose families are facing hardships this year.

Maybe if you had read about the mom who “always does her best to provide ... a special Christmas” for her 4-year-old son, you’d see things differently.

Because, as that letter-writer realizes, “sometimes it’s very hard.”

Perhaps if you’d just met the person who wrote of a local family: “They will help anybody if needed. Now they need some help.”

People sometimes lose their jobs through no fault of their own. Their company shuts its doors, or downsizes and needs fewer workers. Or technology means they are no longer needed.

Sometimes, people suffer from health problems that keep them from working.

More and more in our community, grandparents – many on fixed incomes – find themselves taking care of their grandchildren. It’s not something they ask for. It just happens, and they do the best they can.

And there are people who have jobs and still find life challenging.

If you had just read this letter ...

“I am a single mom who struggles every day with what to pay and how to support my four children. ... We lost everything including our house. We had to literally start over ... I am so concerned about keeping this house warm for the winter I can’t even think of Christmas.”

You see, the world isn’t quite as simple as you’d make it out to be.

But the spirit of the Santa Fund is simple. We want to make sure every kid in the region gets something this Christmas.

We are trying to ease the real pain that’s out there, if just for a day – for a single moment.

Even your pain – the intense hurt you must feel if you could write that letter.

Here’s wishing you a merry Christmas.



Chip Minemyer is the editor of The Tribune-Democrat. He can be reached at 532-5091.

        

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