Thanks and Giving

It has been said that some of life’s greatest lessons come from unexpected sources, and indeed, the most valuable lesson I ever learned about the joy of giving came from a seemingly unlikely ambassador: two doorbell-ditching teenage boys.

It was December 13, and the doorbell rang. When we went to answer the door, nobody was there, but on the doorstep was a small, obviously handmade dessert with a simple note that just said “To Olivia: one lemon cake.” We figured that there must have been a mistake in the delivery. There was no Olivia in our family, nor did we know anyone in the neighborhood that we could think of by that name. We had just returned to the family home after a few years out of the country, and we suspected that maybe one of the renters had had a child named Olivia. However, since we did not know who had left the package, we couldn’t really return it, and I’m pretty sure we just quietly enjoyed the dessert.

The next evening the doorbell rang, and again, an unattended treat was left on the doorstep with another note: “To Olivia: two chocolate cookies.”  This was followed by a trio of goodies on the third day. Although we were enjoying the treats quite a bit, we started to feel a hint of guilt since these were clearly not intended for us, so on the fourth night, we left a note to the mysterious gift-giver to let him or her know that Olivia did not reside at this house. So we were surprised when a fourth treat was left that evening, but the note that we had left was gone. We followed up the following night with a more emphatic note of explanation, but again received the Fifth Night of Christmas. After nights 6 and 7, my brother Matt became determined to “catch” the gift-giver, just to make sure that they knew that they really had the wrong people. We all waited in anticipation as the doorbell FINALLY rang on Day 8, and my brother Matt ran out the door to chase him or her down. After some time (and both a chase on foot and by car), he returned and explained that he had finally caught up to the culprits: two teenage boys not much younger than Matt. Matt told them that our family  really didn’t know an Olivia or where she may have moved to, to which their response was “Yeah, we’ve known that Olivia didn’t live there since we got your first note on Day 4, but we’ve had such fun, that we just decided to keep doing it anyway.” And so, for Days 9-12 we just waited with great anticipation each night for the chime of the doorbell and gratefully enjoyed the Gift.

The whole experience left such an impression that the following year (and many years after) our family selected a house at random and anonymously left something for each night between December 13-24. Those teenage boys were right: it was tremendously fun! Some members of the family would be involved in the planning, others in the preparation of the gifts, and others in the actual delivery, but every night each of us played a part in “Olivia,” and I think every one of us found immense joy in those moments that we spent together in planning and creating, and in the car together on the way to and from the “Olivia” house for the delivery.

The tradition is nearly two decades old now, and there have been several “Olivia” recipients across the nation as we have moved away from home and started the tradition in our own families. I was excited about the prospect of an international debut of “Olivia” this year and asked Matt about it, but he noted that unattended packages might not be quite so welcome on the military base in the middle of Afghanistan. But, he suggested, we might be able to “Olivia” some widows and orphans—not just at Christmas, but throughout and perhaps even after his deployment--and his initial email about Operation Desert Blossom immediately followed.

While “the 12 Days of Christmas” undoubtedly means absolutely nothing to this year’s (Muslim) recipents and will hopefully extend long beyond a few weeks of the holiday season, my own experience with this year’s “Olivia” has not disappointed. In fact, it’s probably been the best year ever.  Of course it is nice to imagine that there are at least some grateful recipients of the basic things that we send and that this makes a difference for the few Afghani people that we can directly help, but even if that were not so, there are tremendous benefits to us in giving; our involvement brings the joy that those teenagers were talking about as we come together as a  community to contribute to a project like this. For those of us here in the States, we gain some much needed knowledge about what’s happening in that part of the world, a sense of profound gratitude for things both big and small that are afforded us, and a newly-found appreciation for the generosity and kindness of our families, neighbors, colleagues, and friends, but also that of complete strangers and new “friends.” It provides people like Matt and his group in the military with a sense of purpose and a constructive and positive respite from the grind of what can be an otherwise utterly brutal environment, sometimes physically, but more often psychologically. Communication around the planning and collecting and coordination and staging and delivering initiates and sustains a delightful and contagious connectedness among people from all walks of life in way that few other activities can. The more and the longer you’re involved, the better it gets. I assure you, it is most decidedly “fun”, and in these moments of kindness, perhaps everybody involved wins.