A Christmas Jar fights the "over stimulation of lights, carols, decorations"

"I have started 2009's Jar already!" Music to my ears! (And I bet to many of yours, as well...)

(Name withheld)

Christmas has always been a hard time for me. In the past all I could see was the commercialism, The hypocrisy, the excess, the over stimulation of lights, carols, decorations. Things and more things. I would avoid the mall from Thanksgiving through the New Year just because all I could think about is "This is too much"! Where had the meaning of Christmas truly gone? Well..I attend a "Wednesday's Letters" book event in my neighborhood and this is where I heard the story of the Christmas Jars. It was that night where I decided to begin my own. It started JUST to help me get used to the idea that Christmas would come again and I had better find a positive way to deal with it. Well.. That jar? (That I grumbled while I decorated it) because it was summer still! and put on my entrance table, so I would see it every time I walked in my home? Began to fill.. and turned into 3 Jars totaling $250.00 by this past Monday Dec 22nd.

Who it would go to though surprised me more than I would ever realize.

While at my daughter's Christmas concert in a huge auditorium, a mom that I have known since our children started kindergarten (they are now Junior's in H.S.) sat down in the row in front of me.. she came in after the concert had began, so it was dark. When the lights came up? I realized who this was and she began to tell me how she and her husband and kids were struggling. I could see it in her face. Her husband ill and out of work, She struggling with her own illnesses and loss. The pain, the depression, just the sadness. I knew immediately that she was placed in that seat by some divine force to guide my Christmas Jar to exactly where it would find it's home.
I placed the book inside a box filled with a small tree, candy and a jar of her own. Since she would recognize my car.. I had a neighbor deliver it straight to her and her family.

This has been the best gift I have ever had the pleasure of giving. I have started 2009's Jar already!

Merry Christmas- Peace On Earth.