For one family, Angel Tree is a treasured—but sometimes heartbreaking—holiday tradition.
As the holidays approach, most children’s thoughts turn to gifts. As an adult, I am of course thinking about this Advent season, and the birth of Jesus. In all honesty, though, my thoughts are also turn to having our grown children home with us, what activities I should plan, holiday baking traditions, meal planning, how much can we fit in the course of a week?
But it’s also the perfect time to think about others. What impact could my family have on someone who needs to see what the love of Jesus means?
For the child of an incarcerated parent, and for a caregiver facing immense financial pressure and emotional strain, I know that my family and I can make a big difference. For the past 12 years our family has participated in Prison Fellowship®’s Angel Tree® program, coordinating gift-giving through our local church. It has been a continual source of blessing to our family.
This year we moved to Washington, D.C., and we started attending Holy Trinity Church in McLean, Virginia. It didn’t take us very long to decide that this church would be our home. One of the first things we did was approach the church staff to see if they would be receptive to having Angel Tree be part of their Christmas season.
The answer was a resounding “yes!” The church agreed to take about 50 kids. What a great start for a first time! Mary Anne, a new friend, was thrilled to help me coordinate. We soon learned that the D.C. area has some Angel Tree churches who have been serving for many years, and most children with incarcerated parents were already spoken for. We also learned that there are some more remote parts of Virginia that have great need, and local churches there don’t always have the capacity to purchase enough gifts … but they DO have the manpower to make deliveries.
For example, one caregiver told me that she would rather have her children not get the gifts the incarcerated parent had requested, but that what they really needed were socks and underwear.
My heart breaking, I told her, “I’ll put down socks and underwear, but is it O.K. if I put a gift you think each child would like, too?”
She said, “Is that O.K. to do?”
I said, “I can’t guarantee anything, but, yes, let’s put it all down!”
Another woman told me that she was having such a hard time potty training her toddler, that she’d rather not have a gift, but just a book to help her potty train her child.
Next we put up the Angel Tree at church. Tags were hung and claimed, and gifts for all 50 children were purchased and wrapped. Volunteers delivered gifts to local children, and Mary Anne and I packed up a car and drove four hours with the gifts for the remaining 40 children to Straight Street, the Angel Tree partner organization that was going to make the deliveries locally in Roanoke.
At Straight Street, we brought the presents into a room with long tables, filled with gifts from churches all over Virginia. Straight Street had taken on the delivery of gifts to 500 Angel Tree children in the area. Mary Anne and I felt stunned at the enormity and sadness of the situation. Those piles of gifts powerfully represented hundreds of hurting children. Hundreds of parents behind bars. Hundreds of struggling caregivers. But we were also in awe of the generosity of the givers and God’s love for these families.
After all, it is better to give than receive. For our family, Angel Tree is about making someone smile, showing them God’s love, and receiving it in return, helping to keep these precious children connected to their incarcerated parent.