You’ve probably got some around your house right now: greeting
cards from friends and family marking a seasonal holiday like
Christmas, New Years, Hanukkah, or Kwanzaa. Do you have a plan to
usefully dispose of them?
You’ve probably got some around your house right now: greeting cards from friends and family marking a seasonal holiday like Christmas, New Years, Hanukkah, or Kwanzaa. Do you have a plan to usefully dispose of them?
St. Jude’s Ranch for Children is a noted charity that can put such used cards to a good purpose. The young residents of this home for abused, abandoned, and neglected children reuse these cards by removing the front panels to make new cards. Then the recycled cards are sold to the public.
St. Jude’s original campus is located about 50 miles from Las Vegas, Nevada, in Boulder City. It was founded by Episcopal priest Father Herbert Ward in 1967. Columnist George Will has referred to it as “a little platoon hard at the business of making the world better, one person at a time.”
Recently two more campuses have been added: in Bulverde and New Braunfels, Texas, where St. Jude’s program also now offers services like therapy, short-term children’s shelter, long-term foster care, and independent living training.
The number of youth who need help continues to rise, and their problems are more complex. There are three ways to support this ministry: send front panels from used greeting cards (holiday, Easter, birthday, get-well, etc.); send Campbell Soup labels (a van was recently purchased this way); or order some recycled cards for your own use ($10.95 per packet). To contact St. Jude’s Ranch for Children write P.O. Box 60100, Boulder City, NV 89006-0100, phone 1-800-492-3562, or visit the internet at www.stjudesranch.org.
Last Friday was a holiday that may well have escaped your notice because it is generally not celebrated here (even though it appears on many U.S. calendars). But one will find it observed in the United Kingdom, Australia, New Zealand, and Canada.
Boxing Day always falls on December 26 (St. Stephen’s Day in the traditional Christian calendar). And although many employees in those nations get it off as a holiday, the origin of its observance is subject to some controversy.
All agree it has nothing to do with prize-fighting or returning unwanted Christmas gifts to the store. It’s origins are found in a past practice of giving cash or other gifts to the lower classes. (Gifts among equals were exchanged on or before Christmas Day, but those to the less fortunate were given the day after.)
One theory says that centuries ago rich merchants gave boxes of fruit and other food to their servants and tradespeople the day after Christmas, a kind of Yuletide tip.
Another says boxes were placed in churches during the Advent Season for donations to the poor. Opened by parish officials on Christmas Day, the contents were distributed by clergy the following day.
In Northern England a local Boxing Day tradition was repeated last week: the Anglican Bishop of Ripon and Leeds took part with hundreds of walkers in an annual Boxing Day Pilgrimage, a four- mile, two-hour walk which represents “an opportunity for the Church to pray for countryside concerns and those involved in the rural economy.”
After a Eucharist in Ripon Cathedral, pilgrims walked through the city and countryside, concluding with a Service of Carols in the ruins of Fountain Abbey.
This pilgrimage follows in the footsteps to 13 monks from St. Mary’s Abbey in York who stayed in Ripon on Christmas Day, 1131 A.D., before walking on to the village of Fountains on St. Stephen’s Day to found an abbey there.
Chuck Flagg teaches English at Mt. Madonna High School. Write him c/o The Dispatch, P.O. Box 22365, Gilroy, CA 95021.
