John, the kids, and I try to help out each year with a food drive and Christmas presents. There is an organization that raises money throughout the year in order to help families in need during Christmas. These families aren't necessarily unemployed. They may have had a child in the hospital for over a year or had been in an accident. There are a variety of circumstances for which they are receiving Christmas Cheer. We don't really know why on our end of helping. What we do is help wrap presents that are purchased. On Wednesday we had abbreviated school and went to work wrapping presents. Lona helped by attaching name tags on presents and putting them in a pile. The boys collected presents from other wrappers and sorted them according to family number. We worked for 7 hours. The kids took about a 15 minute break in all that time. They were exhausted. The very next day we showed up at the same place but this time to help sort food items into boxes and then place the presents with the food boxes. This is an amazing out reach. All this stuff is delivered then on Friday. I like the fact that this teaches our children to work hard for no other benefit than to help people who will never know how much work it was. While doing the wrapping Lona and I had an interesting discussion about Santa Claus. We have always told our children from the beginning that there is no Santa. It is a person dressed up and pretending. We've read a book about Saint Nicolas and how the legend evolved. Lona stated that if Santa Claus was real and really lived forever and at the North Pole then Jesus couldn't exist. That is probably the best reason for us to not promote Santa. If I promoted Santa then would the existence of Jesus become in question too? Did I just lie about Santa so does that mean I lied about Jesus? This was something I wanted to avoid. Lona pretty much summed up the problem between Santa and Jesus. For us Christmas is about Christ.