North Beach Sun Holiday Wish for our Readers
By Kip Tabb –
The Poulos house at Christmas. A gift to the Outer Banks for over 40 years.
Our publisher, Cathy Baldwin, was in K Mart the other night and she overheard how incredulous and thrilled a customer was when they found someone–anonymously–had paid off their layaway.
My daughter’s best friend, who is 16, has asked for donations instead of gifts this Christmas–and yes the donations will go to charity because she’s a really good kid and her mother would never let her get away with something like that.
These are but two examples of the kindness that surrounds us at this time of year–a sense of universal sharing of gifts and burdens.
It was a lesson my brother, sister and myself learned growing up. We were raised in a Jewish family–all of us are still Jewish–but it was a lesson my mother made sure we knew, that at the core of this most Christian of holidays is a universal message of hope and kindness that transcends the individual beliefs of any one religion.
It is a lesson we sometimes forget as we watch frenzied shoppers elbow their way to the front of the line at some big box store; or we see the largest national retailers increasingly impinging upon their employees’ family time. We can find an infinite number of reasons to believe that this gift of love and compassion that we hope exists in all of us is being trampled and corrupted–until we look within ourselves and we realize that as individuals we are the same people that we have always been; that in spite of all that we witness and all that we know, we are still capable of good things and random acts of kindness.
That, perhaps, is what this season is about–a sense of the possibility of love and compassion–a chance to remember that sometimes the smallest act of kindness is the greatest gift of all.
If that is the case, and I believe it is, when we here at the North Beach Sun wish our readers the blessings of the season, it is with the hope that you will be touched by the joy, the love and the compassion of the season and that you will carry those blessings within yourself throughout the year.
