St Nicholas Day 2016
The nineteenth of December, and the volunteers who make sure the custom reaches children who would otherwise miss it.
Happy St Nicholas Day.
Something that has grown around this day over the years I have been here: organised volunteer effort to reach children who would otherwise not get anything. Children in institutions, in hospitals, in displaced families, in households where the money simply is not there.
It is well suited to that, because what goes under the pillow is small and standardised. A volunteer group can assemble several hundred identical modest packages without anybody receiving something visibly lesser than anybody else.
A holiday built around extravagance cannot be extended that way. This one can, and that is a property of the design rather than a happy accident.
To every household with a child waking early tomorrow: a good day.
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