Combating Materialism

Helping Kids Understand the Meaning of Christmas

By Wendy Priesnitz

Green living families can combat the materialism of always expecting gifts by helping their children learn about the joys of giving them too.

Helping kids understand that the holiday season isn't just about receiving gifts is not always easy in our materialistic culture. Passing on values of giving back to make the world a better place can be a challenge, especially with the pressure of holiday expectations. But it can be done.

“Kids get pleasure from seeing someone else happy,” says Charles A. Smith, Ph.D., a professor of child development at the School of Family Studies and Human Services at Kansas State University. He says that the act of giving unleashes the idea that a child can touch someone’s life.

A 60-year-old organization called Heifer International believes that experience empowers children to know they can make a difference in the world. While kids might have difficulty in understanding what it means to write a check to charity, they can easily grasp the power of giving an animal – a goat, flock of chickens, cow, llama or honey bees to name a few of the food- and income-producing animals that Heifer International donates to poor families in 48 countries around the world.

The organization operates on the principle, “Give a man a fish, he eats for a day; teach a man to fish, he eats for a lifetime.” Rather than throwing short-term money at the problem of poverty, Heifer helps people across the globe help themselves to obtain and maintain sustainable sources of food and income, using environmentally sound farming practices.

Moreover, every family and community that receives assistance promises to repay its “living loan” by donating one or more of the animal’s offspring to another family in need.

By participating in Heifer International programs, children delight in earning their own money to help make the gift of an animal possible for those who have no resources to get milk, eggs, wool, fertilizer or honey. Or they can participate in Heifer’s Read to Feed, an educational program that teaches about places in the world where the children’s lives are much different from their own (www.readtofeed.org). Or they can “Carol for Cows” or make and sell animal ornaments and cookies, have a dance-a-thon or decorate cans with Heifer International catalog pictures for placement at local stores and restaurants that are willing to collect money to help end hunger.

From Hanukkah to Christmas to Kwanzaa, Heifer offers a unique way to help a child understand about giving back to help the less fortunate. Want Grandpa to have a cow? Let Janie honor him with her donation to Heifer International in Grandpa’s name. Grandpa receives a beautifully designed “honor card” explaining the gift. Janie learns that she has helped make the world a better place by making a difference in the life of someone who truly needs help.

Wendy Priesnitz was the founding editor of Natural Life Magazine, Life Learning Magazine, Natural Child Magazine and Child’s Play Magazine; is the owner of Life Media, which publishes all four of these now free online magazines; has been a journalist for over fifty years; written thirteen books; contributed to many other books; was the national leader of the Green Party of Canada in the 1990s and has two life learning adult daughters.