Every year the employees at Delta Air Lines Technical Operations donate bicycles to Toys For Tots. (This picture is from last year. I forgot to take a picture of this year's bikes and we had even more than this!) In case you can't tell from this poor picture, the hallway is very long and it's lined with children's bikes.
This is a year-long fundraising effort. The bikes came in by the pallet and were assembled by volunteers. This year's totals were 540 bikes plus $25,000 in a check to Toys For Tots.
To me, this is what Christmas is about--helping and giving to those in need. For every horrible story of people fighting over a Black Friday deal, I try to remember walking down the hallway to my desk and going past all these hundreds of bikes. When I read the tweet collections about spoiled teens talking about smashing their new iPhone because it's the wrong color, I remember a group of children with Downs Syndrome being given a flight to the "North Pole" and how much it meant to them and their parents. Or the party for kids who lost a parent in the military.
Christmas, despite what the retailers want us to think, isn't about things. That it's become this for so many people is sad. Let's try to remember what the Grinch said, "Maybe, he thought, Christmas doesn't come from a store. Maybe, perhaps, Christmas means a little bit more."
