OUR VIEW: Spread holiday service throughout the year

It’s a perennial expectation our society has come to overlook — a fundamental anomaly some find in core values, such as charity and good will. During this, largely the most popular Christian tradition, the holiday season — now highly monopolized by capitalist money-grubbers lurking in every crack and crevice of the economic spectrum — has become a time for good-hearted, God-fearing souls to reach out to his or her fellow human beings and clothe the naked, feed the hungry and tend to the sick and afflicted.

We all expect to see the annual media reports depict a despondent Black man shuffling down the city sidewalk with a Santa cap covering his head, or the clip of a prominent local leader with his sleeves rolled up, passing out steaming crocks of soup at a homeless shelter in front of cameras. But what happens after the turkey, gravy, stuffing and cranberry sauce — the gift wrapping, the Black Friday freak-outs, the Cyber Monday madness and the angels get their wings every time a bell rings?

How many good souls show up in late February or early March to lend a hand at the soup kitchens? Who raids their kitchen cupboards for cans of corn or green beans for the Boy Scouts’ curbside food drive? Which one of us is still wondering if hungry children wearing ill-fitting clothing are still warmly swaddled in the pre-spring breeze that may leave them shivering the way they do in December?

Now, there’s nothing wrong or necessarily requisite of ulterior justification for jumping on the charity train and helping those who are down and out feel the warmth and happiness we easily find within the corona of the angel’s glow as she sits atop the tannenbaum in the family room. For all good intentions and heartfelt purposes, keep chugging on that Polar Express.

Perhaps, a few months later when the carolers stop a-caroling and the wrapping paper has been recycled, take a moment to consider that vagrant or family you watched slurp down soup around the food co-op’s cafeteria table. The cold still bites in February. Kids still need shoes in May. Old folks are still lonely in August.

Instead of spending that cache of charity and kindness in one fell swoop, save some giving for other times of year when those we see on TV reaping the holiday benevolence could still use a shoulder to lean on. We’ve all needed help at some time or another. With these tidings of happiness and joy, from ours to yours, happy holidays.