For the first time in the last few years I had the pleasure of taking part in our local holiday food drive, to gather non-perishable food donations for those who are struggling in our community. This once-a-year event has always been my favourite way to kick off the holiday season, and sees volunteers go door to door collecting food from thousands of households in our community in one night. Throw some snow and Christmas music into the mix, and watch the smiling faces of both the volunteers and the donators, and we have a truly special event. The pandemic has put this on hold for the last 2 seasons, but we were thrilled to be back.

This year was different though. We normally fill an entire gymnasium with boxes piled sky high, and while the donations still poured in this year, it didn’t feel like we had collected as much as in previous years. The change was felt on the front line too, as those who went door to door noted swaths of many homes with nothing on their doorstep. This could be due to the fact that a 2 year hiatus has pushed this event to the back of their minds, or it could be due to new staffing and advertising techniques, but I still don’t know if this accounted for the palpable decrease in donations. As we worked our way through some of the more affluent looking neighbourhoods in our community I noticed that the donations in these areas were also far fewer than previous years, and I recall quickly questioning how people living in such “well off” neighbourhoods could dare not donate to those less fortunate. These were typically the neighbourhoods that stacked bags and boxes of food on their doorsteps; the ones that we could count on to bolster the numbers….but not this year.

Was I right to jump to the conclusion that these people were being selfish, and likely tucked away in their warm homes, counting their piles of canned goods like Ebenezer Scrooge counting his coins? I quickly corrected course. I began to feel like the selfish one, jumping to such a conclusion in today’s world. After all, many of these beautiful, established, but older homes were purchased when homes were actually affordable and attainable. Generations were often raised in these homes, through periods of economic ups and downs, but few as harsh as the inflationary pressures of today. Many of these homes are inhabited by retirees or the elderly, often renovated to meet their needs as they aged. These are people living off of fixed incomes, and for those who don’t have a company pension, they are living off of very basic government pensions, which I’m sure are stretched to the absolute limit today. Should we feel bad for these people? Maybe, but there are others out there who have far greater challenges, and would give anything to be in their shoes. If we don’t entirely feel bad for them, however, we need to at least acknowledge that we can’t judge every book by it’s cover, and certainly can’t judge every person by the roof over their head, even if they are lucky enough to have one.

An open mind goes a long way to helping us curb our preconceived notions. There are certainly people out there who have “golden” pensions, live in absurdly large homes, and willingly decide not to help others through donations, but if we paint everyone who lives in a large home with the same brush we unfairly categorize many of our most generous community members. On the receiving end, if we see someone using a food bank while sporting a $700 Canada Goose Coat and checking their favourite blog on their brand new iPhone and become frustrated or enraged, we may fall into the negative thinking trap of painting all food bank users with the same brush…again, unfairly.

If we remember why we help others in the first place, it helps us realign our frame of mind. If there are one thousand people using a food bank but we refuse to donate because of the one or two people who abuse it, are we forgetting the true purpose of the cause? If we refuse to donate to our favourite charity because of a case of unethical spending that happened by an employee twenty years go, are we forgetting the potentially thousands of people that the charity supports, and asking them to pay the price for the actions of one? As much of the world moves into the holiday season, let’s reaffirm our commitments to be open minded. If we are in a position to support others, let’s do so with a renewed sense of why we do it. If we are in a position where we rely on the support of others to get through this season, let’s also have an open mind, and stop ourselves when we start to judge someone by the way they look or live, being grateful for the supports we receive.

We never know who is on their last can of food, regardless of what they look like or where they live. But, if we look at each other as humans, nothing more and nothing less, we can at least start to move towards a world where there may only be one can of food at the table, but there will be a full serving of kindness and understanding in the hearts of those around it.