Christmas season blessings

Harvard University has a hundred-year-old tradition of holding a Christmas Carol service in their chapel just before the students go home for the holidays. Our friends David and Helen have a somewhat shorter-lived tradition of hosting a party at the time of the carol service. We really enjoy these little traditions, and of course we enjoy the Harvard Choir and the organ music at the service.

This year when we entered the Harvard Chapel we ran into a fellow named Armand who we see there every year. He gave us a picture of ourselves from the first time we met him there. Other friends have reached out to us in various other ways in this season of giving. Alla and I feel touched and blessed by it all.

Nika and I tried to reach out a bit in our own way last night. She signed us up as volunteers on behalf of the Massachusetts Coalition for the Homeless. They provided us with a table at a busy shopping mall, where we had several rolls of wrapping paper, tape, scissors, and a few accessories. We wrapped gifts that shoppers brought us, and they rewarded us by making donations to the Coalition. By the end of the day we had accumulated over $430 in the tip jar, about half of which came in during our shift.

When we started our shift, Nika warned me that she would be bossy. In fact, if she was bossy I didn’t notice it, but she did help me learn quickly how she likes to do this task. We made a good team because we both felt outgoing and we invited people walking by with packages to bring them over for wrapping. We did this whenever we weren’t busy, and as a result we were busy most of the time. (But it did get slow enough later on that I had time to go and buy us a couple of ice cream cones and she had time to go shopping at The Body Shop. She bought some shimmery body butter, inspired by one of the packages we had to wrap.)