Homeless for the Holidays

'Tis the season once again. Every year at this time, people gather with their loved ones to share the warm of friends and family, to eat and drink and watch football, to give thanks for our many blessings and to give back some of what we have received in the form of donations to help those less fortunate.

It's a nice image isn't it? But it, like so much in our culture today, it's as fake as the plastic money we use to obtain it all. Behind this "all's right with the world" picture is a grim reality: suicide rates sky rocket this time of year and every year, there are yet more people for whom the "holidays" mean little more than another bitter reminder of how far they are from where they should be.

Keep in mind, while you are gorging on turkey and watching football or the parade, or celebrating with the people who matter most to you, that there are people out whose turkey and trimmings will come from a soup kitchen, eaten amongst strangers, provided by strangers trying to assuage their guilt at having so much when others have so little.

And don't believe the government figures on just how many homeless there are in this country. The statistics are rigged to include only the most obvious--those who are actually sleeping on the sidewalks or in the parks or in the shelters. It doesn't include those who live in "transient housing," which includes places like cheap motels, rooming houses and the couches of friends and/family, from which they can be tossed into the street at any given moment. And no one has any valid estimates of the number of people who are one or two paychecks away from being homeless but I would guess that, if we did manage to come up with an estimate, it is frighteningly high.

As for giving to any of the organized charities--don't, unless you know personally that whatever charity you are giving to actually serves the people it says it does. So many of them spend much more on "administrative costs" (i.e., their own salaries and the costs of maintaining their nice offices) than they do helping the poor that they don't deserve the name "charity." And those who won't even make the negligible effort of writing a check without a compensatory bribe (tax deduction), are as bad as those who give nothing. If you really want to be charitable, give directly to those you want to help--it doesn't have to be money; food, blankets, warm clothing, one night in a motel where they can take a shower and sleep in an actual bed could be the difference between life or death in places where winter months are bitter cold.

That there are any homeless in this country at all is a disgrace. That so many of them are men and women who put their own well-being, their very lives, at risk so that we can enjoy our holidays in peace and safety is a disgrace beyond reckoning. That we spend so much money around the world to relieve the suffering of people we will never meet, while ignoring the plight of those we pass on the street every day, is a cruel joke.

So, while you are celebrating the season, take a moment to think of those who have nothing, and do something to make a difference in their life.