Share the gift of courtesy

Share the gift of courtesy

EDITOR:

This holiday season, as we hurry to finish our holiday shopping, why not give the gift that’s free to all, politeness and caring.

As we are traveling to up and down Route 224 or any other busy thoroughfare, let someone make that left turn, let someone out of a parking lot onto a busy highway.

Let someone over who needs to merge into traffic, or has their blinker on letting you know they need to get over in to your lane. It’s not your lane anyway, it’s everyone’s lane.

Hold a door for someone who needs to get in or out of a busy store and has their hands full. Say, “excuse me” when stepping in someone’s path.

When talking on a cell phone in a busy store or waiting in a check out line, try to keep the conversation to yourself, no one really cares how your date went last night or about the last fight you had with someone, honestly.

We all try to give the best gift we can to someone during the holiday season, and we all know that this year, more than ever, that may not be so easy to do.

This gift can be given in a hundred different ways.

We can all give the gift of manners to our children, to each other, and it doesn’t cost a thing.

It may just be the best gift you have ever given someone. Try it and see, we’ll all be better for having done it.

Merry Christmas and thank you for reading this piece.

SUE OHLIN

New Middletown

The reason for the season

EDITOR:

I read with interest two letters from writers who felt that the billboard messages reminding people that Christmas is about Christ is somehow a blatant waste of money. From what I understand, they feel that the money could have been used to help the poor. As they go in detail about how Jesus helped the poor and healed the sick, it appears to me that they have just enough knowledge of the Bible to get it wrong.

As I recall, in John 12, Judas admonished Jesus for allowing Mary to anoint him with expensive perfume that she poured on his feet saying that the money could have been used for the poor. Jesus answered him by saying “Leave her alone ... You will always have the poor among you, but you will not always have me.”

There is a growing movement to take Christ out of Christmas and to secularize this season. That is not going to happen. I applaud members of this group who have enough love of Christ in them to put up billboards announcing that this is the season of hope because God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son to save us. Whether you believe it or not does not make it less true.

I don’t understand why these critical writers feel that if you put money toward a cause you believe in than you must not be helping the poor. Does anyone follow people going into jewelry stores or mall stores and say to them that they should be helping the poor instead of buying things? It seems whenever someone takes a stand for Jesus, there are always jeering voices in the crowd trying to drown out those who speak the truth.

Christmas is revered by Christians everywhere as the birth of our Savior, Jesus Christ. You can wish someone a happy Thanksgiving, happy Hanukah or a happy New Year without reprisal. You should be able to say Merry Christmas without fear of offending anyone.

MARIANNE B. LORDI

Youngstown