It’s that time of year again! With the Christmas season comes joy and excitement for the whole world to share. White crystallized snowflakes fall upon the earth as shining golden bells jingle cheerfully. And as usual, we receive our extravagant, tightly-wrapped presents, each containing something dear to our hearts. However, this Christmas, instead of thinking about ourselves, why don’t we spend time thinking about those who are less fortunate?
This December, the Junior Class of 2015 is hosting their annual CPS Christmas Drive, in which students donate presents to teenagers who are in care of the Child Protective Services. This drive, a junior class tradition, was started when Emily Dulger, a case worker at CPS, approached Jesuit to ask if the school could donate presents to teenagers. She requested this because younger children received most of the presents while teenagers received little.
Ursuline Academy of Dallas started a drive to collect presents for teenage girls while Jesuit started a drive to collect presents for teenage boys. And from that day, Jesuit has continued this tradition for 15 years.
“What we try to do is to have two juniors to one CPS kid,” explained Mr. Paul McDaniel, junior counselor and one of the heads of the drive. “[The kids] get to give us a list of things that they want between fifteen and twenty dollars. We do a lot of gift cards, Old Navy sweatshirts, sports t-shirts, and things like that.”
These two juniors go out and buy a gift for a CPS kid, wrap the gift, and include the kid’s name on it as well. Through this process, the juniors establish a personal bond in which they learn about the kid that they are giving a gift to.
Instead of having one big anonymous present collection drive, Jesuit, through the Junior Class Drive and the Angel Tree Drive, tries to grant the wishes of each individual child much like the Christmas experience that a typical family would have. In this way, the gift is much more personal and the child receives what they wanted.
“If we don’t do it, these kids don’t get anything for Christmas,” continued McDaniel. “It’s the time of year for juniors right before the last semester of junior year, and everyone is talking about college and how important your grades are and assessments. It’s just an opportunity to take a break and buy something that’s going to really make a difference in someone’s life.”
As Mr. McDaniel stated, the junior class effort is the deciding factor in whether these CPS teenagers will receive Christmas presents or not. So, let’s make sure we can fulfill these kids’ wishes so that they have the same experience we do on Christmas morning. We should not look at this as a task but as an opportunity to bring cheer to a child’s life this Christmas and as an opportunity to live out our duties of being “men for others.”
