If you’re not familiar with it, you might suspect that there’s fist-a-cuffs over gift exchanges! But Boxing Day is a tradition of giving gifts to people who are less fortunate.

We don’t want to leave the impression that we think us Yanks are Scrooges. A lot of people here are very generous throughout the holiday season. But we think Boxing Day is an interesting tradition, truly in tune with the spirit of this time of the year.

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The son who learned to give

We found a great story about a mom who taught her son about the value of giving. We’ll hit the highlights here. It’s written from the son’s point-of-view.

The first Christmas that he remembers, he was thoroughly excited about all of his gifts. His mom soon squashed his enthusiasm; she told him he had to choose one present to give away to a little kid who wasn’t as lucky as he was. It was a hard decision, but he finally chose a present to give away.

Another Christmas, he really had trouble deciding between his gifts before finally settling on his new checker set. His mom left the room, only to return a short time later with a piece of cardboard, crayons, and his bottle cap collection. They proceeded to make a checker set by hand.

The author remembers one year, when his mom had been laid off, that he didn’t get many gifts. She told him that he didn’t have to give any presents away that year. But he decided he still wanted to observe the tradition. That year, he gave away his new football. Six months later, he asked his mom what she wanted for her birthday. Being a wonderful mom, she requested a football!

The son continued this tradition of giving away one of his presents every year, even as an adult. He ended up passing it on to his own son.

A reserve to give

This boy’s mom made it clear to him that they gave something every year to what she called “poor people.” He says that, years later, he realized they were poor themselves. Isn’t it interesting – to some extent, poor is a state of mind. If we have enough in reserve that we can afford to give something away, we must not be poor.

Give away the good stuff

Picture yourself as a kid. Do you remember being excited by just about every single gift? What if your mom would have told you that you had to give one of them away? That would have been pretty hard, huh?

We often give what we don’t want any longer or we buy something new just for the purpose of giving it away. We don’t have an attachment to it. It seems to us that giving away something you just received would really pack a punch – even for an adult, but especially for a kid. 

The gift of time

Then there’s the checker set. After much debate, he decided to give that away, but his mom gave him a different option. He learned that material possessions are valuable, but the gift of our time is even more valuable. The checker set he gave away was one-of-a-kind and probably worth more than the mass-produced one he kept.

Giving when it hurts

We thought it was touching that, in the bad year when his mom said he didn’t have to give anything away, he still chose to give up his football. It showed how much he had learned from his mom.

She taught him another lesson when she asked for a football for her birthday. Sometimes when you give, it comes back to you, even when it’s unexpected.

Pass it on

He passed on this tradition of passing on gifts to his own son. Of all the Christmas traditions we could pass on to our kids, what could be better than establishing a tradition of giving?

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(Image in today's post by zerobug)

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Sometimes we forget how much we already have. As we get older, we put expectations on ourselves and judge ourselves based on what we have and the gifts we can give.

The cardboard box

Have you ever seen a little kid get his or her first bigg toy – the one that comes in the bigg cardboard box? Have you ever seen a kid put the real toy aside and start playing with that cardboard box? They turn it into a fort and have fun with it for hours, playing with their friends. Through the eyes of us adults, that cardboard box is extraneous. Through the eyes of a kid, the cardboard box is a valuable toy itself.

We develop our point-of-view from our experiences. Obviously, we want to learn from them, but we need to be careful not to take away the wrong lessons. So this holiday season, try looking at the world through the eyes of a child again. Look at things as if you were seeing them for the first time. Be innocent again.

Through the eyes of a child

We want to share a touching story comparing how we perceive things as adults to how we might see them through the eyes of a child. A rich dad wants to show his daughter how less fortunate people live. So he took his daughter out to the country, where they spent a couple of days and nights on a farm with a family most people considered very poor. Here’s the conversation as they drove back to the city …

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How was the trip?

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It was great, Dad.

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Did you see how poor people live?

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Oh yeah.

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So, tell me, what did you learn?

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I saw that we have one dog and they have four. We have a pool that reaches to the middle of our garden and they have a creek that has no end. We have imported lanterns in our garden and they have the stars at night. Our patio reaches to the front yard and they have the whole horizon. We have a small piece of land to live on and they have fields that go beyond our sight. We buy our food, but they grow theirs. We have walls around our property to protect us; they have friends to protect them. We have a staff that serves us, but they serve others. Thanks Dad for showing me how poor we are.

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As you might imagine, the girl’s father was speechless. He thought he would teach his daughter a lesson … it turns out that it was he who needed to learn one.

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We really appreciate you checking in on us today. Join us next time when we talk about the best present of all. Until then, here’s to your bigg success!

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Direct link to The Bigg Success Show audio file:
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(Image of the car by stOrmz,CC 2.0)

(Images of dad and daughter in today's post by stockbroke)

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Adam, have you ever thought about becoming a Wall Street investment banker, losing all your money and turning to the government for help?

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I have not.

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Maybe that would be an interesting experiment! Adam, there was a guy in the homeless shelter who said something to you that helped you get a job that paid well. Can you tell us about that?

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That’s my favorite part of this story. That was really the turning point for me in Charleston. I had been applying for jobs and two weeks in, nobody was hiring me. I was having spaghetti dinner at the homeless shelter one night and complaining about the economy. I mean, here I am – Adam Shepard, the king of the American Dream, “you can do it,” I’m proving the Dream – and I was complaining at a homeless shelter! The great thing about the shelter is that nobody is afraid to share their opinion; they’ll tell you what they really think. There was a guy – Phil Coleman – who piped in and said that I had to go out there and get the job. They weren’t going to call the shelter, which was the number I had put on the application. So I went to the moving company the next day, just like Phil Coleman had told me. I said, “Kurt, my name is Adam Shepard. I’m the greatest mover you’re going to find. So hire me or not. I’ll come in and work a day for free.” I just gave him this speech and he hired me on the spot. What’s interesting is that I took advice from a guy at the shelter who I wouldn’t have looked twice at in my “real life.” So that was a great humbling experience and it helped me turn the corner on this whole project.

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Something else – you waited for that guy at the moving company to show up. I think a lot of us expect that phone call. We think we’ve done our part. We went in and filled out the application. Now they need to call us. But Phil encouraged you to go and do whatever you had to so you could have a face-to-face meeting with the guy who would hire you.

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Exactly. And the moving company job was a job that I wanted. I was going to do anything possible until he sent me out the door with a definitive no. It’s a job that requires skill, of course, but it’s a skill you can learn if you’re willing to work. I wanted to meet the guys who were doing this work. It’s crazy – everybody’s moved their little apartment or home. But I wanted to meet these guys who were moving furniture eight to ten hours a day, six days a week, week after week after week.

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Or maybe even eighteen hours a day, at least once?

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Oh, yeah, the eighteen-and-half hour move. That was just crazy, an incredible experience – to start at nine in the morning and finish, literally, in the middle of the night. The great thing about that move, and I won’t get into detail about it now, was that every move after that was a piece of cake! Once you’ve done a move like that, you’re ready for anything. It was tough; it was a challenge for sure, but it prepared me for the next steps.

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Here’s something that intrigued me, Adam. You got a good job but you didn’t move out of the shelter right away. Man, I think I would have booked it. Why did you stay?

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There are two reasons I stayed at the shelter. First of all, I was able to save money and then when I first moved out, I was able to buy a truck and I could move up from there. But also, I was meeting guys who were so much more fascinating than me. I wanted to be able to tell their story and to really talk to them and see where they come from. That’s what this was all about for me. It wasn’t just to dip into a homeless shelter for a week or two. I really wanted to stay there for a little while. But you’re right – the moving company was a great job to have – because I was able to go out, work hard, make $9 an hour and get a tip now and then. I was able to save a lot of money for sure.

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We don’t want to tell anyone the ending, so we’ll stop here with the progression of the story. For anyone who has to go to a homeless shelter or wants to live vicariously through you, what are some tips for living in a homeless shelter?

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Oh my gosh, so many tips. Bring your own soap. Bring your own toiletries and towel. When you go into a shelter, you have to keep to yourself. I didn’t go in and act like I was above the shelter. I went in, hung out, and sat in a corner. Eventually, I was able to work my way in to be part of the group. I think that’s what’s so important – I had to humble myself. And the way I was able to connect with these guys was what was so great. Stereotypes are being shattered while some are being proven true. The bottom line … the whole way through here … is that you can’t take anything for granted. It doesn’t matter where you live – in a homeless shelter or on the Upper East Side – you can’t take anything for granted. That’s what this whole story is all about.

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That is awesome. What I learned from this, Adam, is that it pays to spend money on conditioner but not lunch because you ate Vienna sausages on crackers for lunch. So we learned a lot about you just in those choices!

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Even if you’re poor, you can be vain!

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We thank Adam so much for sharing his story with us. We highly recommend that you read his great book, Scratch Beginnings.

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Direct link to The Bigg Success Show audio file:
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