Annual Gifting the Children

Our Church does something that I have never had the privilege of participating in before. They do an Annual Gifting the Children every Christmas.

Today’s service was the Christmas program. Everyone had the opportunity to participate. I had no idea they were going to have all the children called up front to sing “Away In The Manger” so unfortunately we didn’t get a picture of Selena up there. She stood so proud, except she wanted Clarence’s microphone to sing in.

After the service we all gathered in the fellowship hall for cookies, coffee, and punch, while Santa…well he wanted to dress up as Santa but the church decided not to go that far handed out gifts to every child there, even the visitors received something.

There were a lot of gifts under those two trees! It was hard to really get good pictures of all of them.

Selena waited so patiently as she watched friends, and all the other kids get their gifts. They would call out the age and either boy or girl so all the kids in that age group would stand up, then have to wait to see if their name was called. The room was so full of laughter. Don here, the Santa did a great job of joking with every single child.

Selena got impatient and finally informed us that she was 8 yrs old, either that or she thought she was going to be left out. Finally they asked for the 3 year olds. Selena gasped with such excitement everyone in the room heard her. Don, cracked up as he knew she was the only 3 year old. He asked her if she was Selena, and off she ran to get her present.

The package was almost as big as she was, and heavy. She waddled back to our table to start opening it. I don’t know who chose her card off the tree, but boy did they go overboard. She got a 8 pack of large containers of play dough, a Glo Doodle, and a Disney book called The Princess and the Frog, it is a board book mounted on a Doodle board, so that as the child reads the story they can draw something from the page.

There was so much generosity today at the Church, as  no child went away without a fabulous gift, bought just for their age, and gender, and these presents were not small. I have never ever experienced anything like this in a church before.