Mitch Albom
Published: December 19, 2004
By Mitch Albom
You bring Popsicle sticks. You bring glitter. You bring boxes of donuts
and inexpensive pizza. You bring stuffed animals, donated clothing,
green and red streamers, Scotch tape. If you can find it, you bring
the cassette A Motown Christmas to play in the rickety old tape machine.You
gather these items, you get in your cars, bundled against the cold,
and you go, early Saturday morning, to a place you are not likely to
go very often-a building in the inner city where the walls are industrial
beige, where the bedrooms are sometimes shared by several families,
where homeless mothers, fathers and children eat in a windowless cafeteria.And,
for a few hours, you alter reality.
For the last seven Decembers, I have been part of a volunteer group
that visits The Salvation Army Booth Shelter in downtown Detroit. Together,
we do something I didn't always know was possible: make Christmas.Not
celebrate Christmas. Celebrating Christmas-or Hanukkah or Kwanzaa-is
mostly an internal thing, gathering your own loved ones, buying them
presents, cooking your favorite meals."Making" a holiday is something
else. It is constructing joy in places and on faces that might not otherwise
have it. It is an opportunity in America that cries out for participation-at
nursing homes, shelters, hospitals. And it is easier than you think.
In our case, we formed a group of volunteers back in 1997 through a
radio program I do on WJR-AM in Detroit. In our first year, we heard
about the Booth Shelter, a facility that serves the homeless and needy,
particularly women who had been abused or addicted. "Most of these
folks won't have a Christmas," the then program director, Eileen
Poole, told us. Poole had been with The Salvation Army for 30 years.
She'd seen how helping people get on their feet was a day-by-day process.
She assured us any holiday we could "make" would be welcome.So,
that first Saturday, we stormed in like a work crew. We opened tables
and set up chairs. We laid out arts and crafts and ran streamers around
the pale concrete walls. We opened boxes of donuts, poured cups of juice,
helped glue a beard on our Santa Claus.And then we waited. The shelter
residents were still upstairs, and with our meager decorations in place,
we took stock. Most of us were white, suburban, middle-class people
who thankfully had never experienced the need for a place like this.
We looked at each other, feeling awkwardly privileged. It was a little
too quiet.Then, suddenly, down they came. A few. Then a dozen. Then
dozens more. Mothers holding infants or pushing strollers. Children
breaking free and running to the play tables. Men and women gratefully
passing pizza slices. A group of pre-teens turning up the music and
breaking into a dance. In less than five minutes, the place went from
quiet to chaos-a beautiful, welcoming chaos. It was like those words
from "Jingle Bells," the ones about "making spirits bright."Oh,
sure, there were a few strained moments. Some volunteers weren't sure
what to say. Some of the shelter's women were skeptical of these new,
smiling faces. Some children, already hurt by the ugliness of the world,
were shy around so many hugs and head rubs.But it breaks down. It always
does. The Temptations sing "Rudolph, the Red-Nosed Reindeer," and
the kids' joyful shrieking shatters any invisible walls. Soon there
are line dances and finger painting and a magician holding court in
the hallway, and mothers going through a makeshift "Christmas store"
where they can help themselves to donated presents-clothing and toys
and household items they desperately need."I was amazed the first
time I came downstairs and saw all those volunteers," recalls Roszenna
Shamily, 38, who, along with two of her children, was in the facility
for several years, recovering from substance abuse. "The way they
took our kids and started playing with them. Just to have an hour of
help and relief-you don't know what that means.""I was trying
to start my life over," adds Brenda Young, 44, who had been hooked
on drugs and alcohol and also was living at the facility with her three
children when our group came by one December. "That party was the
bright spot for my year."There was one December when one of the volunteers
brought a microphone and speakers, and people took turns belting holiday
karaoke. There was another December when a fire truck passed by the
shelter, and we flagged it down. We asked the firemen if, in exactly
20 minutes, they could ride past again and blow the sirens with a special
guest on board. They said OK.Twenty minutes later, in this cold and
desolate section of Detroit, we had a flock of families outside, and
suddenly the children were screaming-because Santa Claus was stepping
down from the hoses and ladders."My kids still talk about that,"
Roszenna says. "My little boy, A.J., was telling his younger sister,
Arlena, that Santa Claus didn't exist. But that day, Arlena sat on
Santa's lap." She laughs. "I don't have that issue anymore."Today,
Roszenna and Brenda both work in the Booth Shelter's offices. Both
women came through the substance-abuse program ("They got us on our
feet," Roszenna says) and now have their own homes. They will be at
the party again this year. They'll be helping to lead it.
Now, let's be honest. The holidays bring out many "feel good"
stories. It's easy to cynically dismiss another.What makes this one
worth telling is that it is not someone else's story. It is your own,
just waiting to happen. Even now, there are shelters, soup kitchens,
orphanages or elderly care facilities that would welcome volunteers
who might turn a dull hour into a holiday memory. You need not be Florence
Nightingale. Our group has soccer moms, carpenters, businessmen, teachers.
Our parties are plastic plates and construction paper and people dancing
the Hokey Pokey. One December, I was standing there, watching this noisy
celebration spill through the hallways, when I felt something small
in my hand. It was a finger. I looked down to see a little girl smiling
at me. She couldn't have been more than 5. Her face was dusted with
green and red sparkles. I closed my grip around her tiny digits. Her
mother, a heavyset woman, said: "Tell him what I told you."The little
girl said, "Thank you."
Which was my line, of course, and I would have said it if there wasn't
such a lump in my throat.I have always been partial to that Beatles
lyric: "And, in the end, the love you take is equal to the love you
make." As we head to the shelter for another year of Popsicle sticks
and pizza slices, I know those words are true for holiday joy as well.
What you take equals what you make. And you can make it. You don't
have to wait. I imagine, wherever you live, someone could use a little
holiday making right now.
PARADE Contributing Editor Mitch Albom is the author of the best-selling
books "Tuesdays With Morrie" and "The Five People You Meet in
Heaven."