In the spirit of giving

December is the time of many a celebration. For us Finns, Christmas is not the only festivity at this time of the year, as we also have our Independence Day on the 6^th, which is a national holiday. Each year the president has a big party for the important and achieved people of the nation, and each year at the same time ordinary people serve the poor free food outside of the president’s “castle” (yes, even socialistic Finland has people in need, unfortunately). Ever since I first learned about the generosity of these “ordinary” people, I felt very impressed and glad that there are people who genuinely care about    others.

After realizing the extent of poverty in the San Francisco Bay Area, I remembered this Finnish Independence Day tradition of helping others, and for some time now a desire to do something similar for the homeless here has been brewing in my mind. This year, as it happens, Finland had her 100^th independence day, which provided me the last remaining push to finally decide to materialize my desire to help. This would be a perfect way to celebrate our centennial!

So, I invited some of my family members to join me in making some 50 peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and help me distribute them out. I chose to give them out here, in San Francisco, where I currently live. The event was a success – the sandwiches were all gone soon! And how good it felt to be able to help others!

In retrospect, I find it interesting to notice some of the thoughts that were arising in my mind when I was planning to execute this project. I seemed to have doubts about whether the homeless people would appreciate my gesture, as a lot of them really only want money. However, out of all the people we met, only one declined the sandwich, and only one requested white bread (I used only whole grain of course). In fact, everyone we met was very appreciative! Especially that one person with a peanut allergy – knowing that peanut is one of the “big eight” allergenic foods, I had made one sandwich with just jelly. Even though everything went well, what would it even matter if the people on the streets didn’t like my idea? At least I was trying to help others and had genuinely good intentions. Sometimes one just has the get over oneself.

Here are some of the people we met:

Even though this was a very small gesture, and will not do much in the grand scheme of things, I can say that it was worth it. If nothing else, I hoped to show others that there are people thinking and caring about them out there. Personally, it also makes me feel glad that after all this time thinking about doing this, I finally had the courage to go for it despite my mind’s unhelpful suggestions. Most importantly, however, going through with this event made me realize that there are many ways to be generous – in every situation there is always an opportunity to smile, to be kind, or to offer others help and friendship.

I wish you a very joyful Christmastime.

Anna-Kaisa