We’ve stepped into the part of the calendar year known for its celebrations, selling and, for some people, sadness. Most people invest their time in the upbeat moods of the holiday season, but some spend the whole time waiting for it to get over.
It’s as if they waited for Santa Claus, realized he wasn’t going to come, but hadn’t thought yet of becoming Santa Claus.
In some people, of course, the sadness is authentic, it comes from something real. The holidays for the first year after a major personal loss can be especially hard, almost crippling. Each holiday without a loved one primarily reminds them of the holidays with that loved one.
But for some adults holiday-related sadness is a persistent problem not connected to a specific loss. It is more of a spiritual sadness. They are sad or depressed every year at the same time. They haven’t made the change from waiting for gifts to preparing gifts.
As an adult, waiting for Santa Claus sets up almost certain disappointment. Finding ways to be Santa Claus is a recipe for satisfaction.
It is one of the differences that C.S. Lewis writes about in “The Screwtape Letters”: the hell of worrying about what is going to happen to you rather than the pleasure of considering what you will do.
Good parents can specifically help their children learn to give and, even more, to look for places and ways to give to others. It is an important way that parents attend to their children’s spiritual growth.
This is the fourth column in a series about what good parents do. The others have been about being a strong presence, building trust and using accurate information to protect children. Attending to their children’s spiritual growth is as important as the others, and considering how to give to others is a spiritual exercise.
There is no end of good ways to give in ways that help. Need some ideas? On Nov. 20 The Herald published two full pages of “Ways to Give,” two pages, 12 columns, small type, single spaced. There is no limit to the number of ways to give.
In that one section some ways to give were money, some were service and time. Some were to people in need, others were on behalf of animals or the environment.
Part of the mystery in giving is that each person and each family may give in ways they can and want to. Each can give to things that interest them, that speak to them in some important way.
Our world is such that each person can give of themselves to something in which they believe, that is bigger than themselves. In doing so they become bigger people.
Parents can teach their children about giving to something that is bigger than themselves by first doing it as a family activity.
Our culture doesn’t encourage the idea of giving to something bigger than one’s self. Well, it does to some degree, but the market-driven culture wants people to first believe that it is “all about you.” What a nightmare it would be to believe that it was “all about you,” like learning that the “Hokey Pokey” is what it’s all about.
But, parents can do better than that for their children and with them. Giving to others is a cornerstone of spiritual growth. Giving joyfully makes it even stronger, and it should be joyful because there are benefits within view almost from the beginning of parenthood.
Children and teenagers who regularly spend active time in a faith community with their parents and other caring adults have fewer and less serious problems than children who don’t, according to Peter Scales and Nancy Leffert in “Developmental Assets: A synthesis of the Scientific Research on Adolescent Development.”
Other studies have found that some children who live in traumatically dangerous areas, such as war zones, feel better than many children who live in inner American cities. If their parents can stay close and offer them reassurance, war zone children can develop the sense of belonging to a community, understand a meaning for their struggle and hold out hope for a solution.
Belonging, meaning and hope don’t come in tight jeans, or baggy ones for that matter, no matter what the ads promise. Belonging, meaning and hope come from believing in and working toward something bigger than one’s self.
And working toward something bigger than one’s self, much bigger, is at the center of spiritual growth.
Bill France, a father of three, is a child advocate in the criminal justice system and has worked as director of clinical programs at Luther Child Center in Everett. You can send e-mail to bill@billfrance.com.
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