This year, take on Santa's job

by: Nolan Finley

Sorting through my aunt's papers after her death, I came across a letter written to her 40 years earlier by my mother during our family's most wrenching year.

My father had been off the job for nine months because of a strike at the chemical plant where he worked. Our shelves were stocked with shiny tin cans of government surplus food picked up at the union hall. Dad hustled every odd job he could, and my sisters and I for a while were sent back to Kentucky to stay with relatives so my mother could go to work.

In the letter to her sister, my mother talks about our struggles, her embarrassment and frustration apparent in every line, and finishes by asking for a favor: Could she wrap and send a few Christmas presents for her three young children?

Reading it decades later, I was stunned. My mother was the proudest person I've ever known, and fiercely private about family business. I can only guess that the prospect of a bare Christmas tree was more upsetting than asking for help.

Of course, my aunt responded. The gifts she sent helped make Christmas a bright day in a dark year, just as it should be.

I've been thinking about that letter as Michigan approaches its most desperate Christmas since the Great Depression. How many parents in our recession-ravaged region are writing similar pleas? How many have resigned themselves to telling their children that, this year, Santa's been laid off?

Despair has spread to families and neighborhoods never touched before, says Michael Brennan, head of the United Way of Southeastern Michigan. Brennan says some once faithful donors are now calling the 2-1-1 line asking for assistance with food, clothing and shelter.

At the same time the need is exploding, resources are dwindling. Donations to United Way have dropped to $41 million, from nearly $70 million five years ago. The charity is heavily dependent on payroll deductions; fewer paychecks trigger the steep fall-off in donations.

Other charitable outfits are also coming up short as Michigan's 15 percent unemployment rate takes its toll.

But 85 percent of us are still working. Maybe we've taken pay cuts, but we've still got jobs; paychecks are coming in. Those of us who are still OK must dig deeper.

Have a few more bucks taken out of your check for United Way. Buy a newspaper from a Goodfellow. Drop off a turkey at a food bank.

Or maybe get more personally involved. Look around your neighborhood, your church, your school for families in need and adopt them for Christmas. Buy and wrap presents; cook them a holiday dinner; cover the heat bill.

Worrying about Christmas cheer may seem frivolous for families that can't pay the rent or buy groceries.

But it's the time of year when hard times hurt the most, and children are most acutely aware of what they don't have.

I'll give more this year to honor a mother who swallowed her pride to ask for help for her kids, and an aunt who gave it.

Nolan Finley is editorial page editor of The News. Reach him at nfinley@detnews.com. Watch him at 8:30 p.m. Fridays on "Am I Right?" on Detroit Public TV, Channel 56.

http://www.detnews.com/article/20091213/OPINION03/912130314/Finley--This-year--take-on-Santa-s-job