{"id":936,"date":"2011-12-21T11:26:51","date_gmt":"2011-12-21T16:26:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/smalltownamerica\/?p=936"},"modified":"2011-12-21T11:26:51","modified_gmt":"2011-12-21T16:26:51","slug":"a-secret-santa","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/smalltownamerica\/2011\/12\/a-secret-santa.html","title":{"rendered":"A Secret Santa"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>We hear about a few &#8216;secret Santa&#8217;s&#8221; every Christmas, but this year in northern Ohio, we have had a bunch of them.\u00a0 They just want to give someone merry Christmas without creating a fu over themselves.<\/p>\n<p>We have had\u00a0 a news report about several &#8220;secrets\u00a0Santa&#8217;s &#8216; at work.\u00a0 One Santa has been going around placing $1000. bills in the Salvation Army buckets.\u00a0 Another has gone to several Kmart stores and paid off everyone&#8217;s layaway purchases.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>There was a family whose house burned to the ground and had nothing but the clothes on their backs.\u00a0 Some one is bringing Christmas to their motel room, so their children can still believe in Santa.<\/p>\n<p>Kindness and generosity are not lost.\u00a0 We see it every day, unfortunately we don&#8217;t hear about the giving people in our world.\u00a0 It sells more newspapers if you show\u00a0the house burning down or thieves stealing presents from under the tree.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>One gentleman had a call from a needy person who had been\u00a0connected to the wrong number.\u00a0 The food basket she had signed up for, never arrived and her family would have no gifts or Christmas dinner.\u00a0 The man who received the call, hunted this family down and brought them a huge basket of food and boxes of gifts.<\/p>\n<p>Even in a world that seems to be self serving and cruel, we can find the Spirit of Christmas if we look for it.\u00a0 It&#8217;s ordinary people like you and me that can make the difference.\u00a0 We don&#8217;t need a big organization behind us, to bring food to a neighbor; just open our overstocked pantries.\u00a0 We don&#8217;t have to be rich to hand a stranger a twenty dollar bill.\u00a0 We don&#8217;t to be superman to recognize your waitress is a single mom with two small children.\u00a0 Give an extra nice tip and her children will have presents for Christmas.<\/p>\n<p>Christmas is a wonderful time to focus on the giving spirit we all should have every day of the year.\u00a0 Jesus is the reason for the season, but He uses our hands and feet to carry His blessings to people in need. Let&#8217;s share our wealth, money, gifts, encouragement, hope, love. or maybe just a hug and Merry Christmas.<\/p>\n<p>We would all like to pass out $1000. bills, but we can&#8217;t.\u00a0 However. we can all had out a few groceries and a $20.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>We hear about a few &#8216;secret Santa&#8217;s&#8221; every Christmas, but this year in northern Ohio, we have had a bunch of them.\u00a0 They just want to give someone merry Christmas without creating a fu over themselves. We have had\u00a0 a news report about several &#8220;secrets\u00a0Santa&#8217;s &#8216; at work.\u00a0 One Santa has been going around placing&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":420,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14,27],"tags":[46,37],"class_list":["post-936","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-inspiration","category-news-or-feature","tag-holiday","tag-touching-others-s"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v23.9 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>A Secret Santa - Small Town America<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/smalltownamerica\/2011\/12\/a-secret-santa.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"A Secret Santa - Small Town America\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"We hear about a few &#8216;secret Santa&#8217;s&#8221; every Christmas, but this year in northern Ohio, we have had a bunch of them.\u00a0 They just want to give someone merry Christmas without creating a fu over themselves. 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