Help During the Holiday Season

I've been thinking a lot about people in need. There was the wonderful thread on Etsy about Who Needs Help This Holiday Season. The lovely Treasury above, which includes my blue card holder, was created by Reflections, who started the HOST thread. HOST is a team of Etsy sellers established to help others, I hadn't heard of them before reading this thread.

There are signs of people needing help all around. The economic news seems to get bleaker and bleaker and I've begun to hear about my employees whose spouses have been laid off from their jobs. We are being required to take three days of furlough (unpaid time) in the next few months, but that seems like such a small thing compared to situation of many. More than double the "normal" number of people have been coming to our local food stamp office to seek assistance.

I've scaled back on my Christmas giving and plan to give to the local food bank in lieu of more gifts. And giving is what the season is all about.