Article December 19, 2011 Issue

The best Christmas gift for me

By Linda Fontaine

I love to give gifts —at Christmastime, and all year long! The gift of giving comes in so many packages—not just wrapped with pretty paper and a bow. We can give of our goodness, talent, experience, enthusiasm, time . . . the list goes on.

Recently, I gave someone a gift bag with a present inside, simply because I wanted to. The person’s reply was, “Oh, you didn’t have to do that!” This improvisational gesture gave me such an exuberant feeling of love that in hindsight, it almost seems like a selfish reason for giving. But really, it’s very natural to want to give.

A few years ago, I started thinking more about what giving really means. What would it be like if we approached our careers, our family relationships, our friends, the person on the street, with the motivation of wanting to give the gift of expressing God’s pure love? What kind of a life experience would we create, what kind of a world?