What are those reasons again. . . ?

I went downtown yesterday. In my two and a half years of living in "Hamilton" (it's technically all Hamilton, but really we're on the outskirts of Ancaster), I have not been downtown often, except when, in first year, I volunteered at the Living Rock. I tend to get stuck in the campus bubble. But I love the atmosphere downtown. . . a little shady in places, quaint in others, and so culturally diverse. What a switch from the upper-middle-class, McMansion-filled, SUV-infested, corporately-developed Meadowlands subdivision.

Well, it was a switch in more ways than one yesterday. I went downtown yesterday morning to volunteer for the City Kidz Christmas party. It was amazing. City Kidz is a ministry for underprivileged children (is that the politically correct term anymore? maybe "non-adults who are differently privileged"?) in Hamilton. It's run out of an old movie theatre, which was built in the forties, but actually showed only adult films in the eighties.

Now it's being used to glorify God.

Throughout the year, City Kidz staff and volunteers run a program twice every Saturday and visit each child in his or her home once a week. The Christmas party actually happens three times in one weekend; I was there for the third on Sunday morning.

Each time, they sent out buses to pick up most of the kids (some come with their parents) and treated them to a Christmas show -- with singing, games, prizes, skits, video clips -- the kids loved it. It's not just entertainment though, each skit and song talked about why we celebrate Christmas (hint: greed is the wrong answer). My part was very small, all I had to do was help seat people and hand out juice boxes and butter tarts. The rest of the time, I was assigned to a row, where I basically sat back and enjoyed the show with two really excited little boys, C--- and A------ . Most of the time, these two were bracing themselves to shoot their hands in the air in hopes that they would be called on to go onstage and play a game and maybe even win one of the massive remote control trucks that were on display as prizes.

Yet, when a staff member mistakenly thought they had won a truck and came up to congratulate them, they didn't show any bitterness or even disappointment when they found out she was wrong.

Santa and Mrs. Claus came at the end. On Saturday, I was told, one little girl was so excited that she jumped in the aisle and started dancing after them.

After the show, each person got a lunch, each child got a stocking, and each boy and girl got an age- and gender-appropriate gift -- then they all went home.

When I had first arrived that morning, I was told that one mother had called late to register her family. All 1500 spaces were already full, and they were about to turn her away [no room at the inn. . .]. Very upset, she told the staff person to whom she was speaking that there weren't going to be presents for her children this year. All she had promised them was City Kidz.

This is Canada. I'm in Hamilton, Ontario. Let's not even look at the rest of the world. That woman's children live down the mountain from kids who get cell phones, Xbox 360s, laptops for Christmas. Kids whose tree is always sparkling, with presents stuffed underneath.

Kids like me.

No, I wouldn't say I was a spoiled child. Not even that I was unaware -- from an early age, I helped with Rotary Christmas drives. And I wasn't a Meadowlands kid. I didn't get many big ticket items. But what standards do I judge by? My mom always warned us, "There's not going to be much for Christmas this year." Yet, she always managed to get us all the little things we needed or that we just wanted. And then there was our dad, our grandparents, our aunts and uncles. And I think I felt like I deserved those presents. I was told that I deserved them. Hmm.

Yeah, I guess I won't go buy myself that sweater tomorrow, after all.

This is how we know what love is: Jesus Christ laid down his life for us. And we ought to lay down our lives for our brothers. If anyone has material possessions and sees his brother in need but has no pity on him, how can the love of God be in him? Dear children, let us not love with words or tongue but with actions and in truth. (1 John 3:16-20)