Homily story of the week
Pay it forward
Few banks offer them anymore, but Christmas club accounts were once popular ways to save for holiday spending. You put away a small amount every week for a year, earned a tiny bit of interest, and couldn’t access the money until November. My grandmother did this for all 13 of her grandchildren. At Thanksgiving, she presented us with our holiday money. It was the same amount each year and it wasn’t much, but to a small child, it seemed like a king’s ransom. (Although one year, my cousin Daniel suggested we get a raise for inflation. His request was denied.)
Strings—of a good kind—were most definitely attached to the gift. We were supposed to spend it on others—primarily on Christmas presents for our family. And we had to donate a portion of it to a charitable cause; we could choose how much and to what, which was an empowering decision for a kid.
However, this wasn’t entirely a lesson about giving. Grandma said we could also buy something small—emphasis on small—for ourselves. We didn’t have to prove what we did with it, and she never asked, but knowing that it wasn’t an easy sacrifice for her to save that money made us want to do the right thing.
