A Christmas Tale--Real Live Elves

​​A veteran pre-K teacher in a disadvantaged neighborhood in Los Angeles had the tradition each December of having Jessie, the class Elf on a shelf, who gifted all her students small tokens of holiday cheer. Although it was difficult to do on her teacher salary, she found ways to give something small--a pencil, a pack of crayons, or a small notebook. No matter how small her gift, the students were always grateful.

Then, the pandemic hit and through the switch to online learning, the educators' eyes were opened to the many hardships that their students faced--living in rooms with little or no heat, doing the daily zoom calls at the back of a mini-mart while the parent worked, or in motel rooms where their families were temporarily sheltered.

The teacher knew that she had to do something but on her limited means, what could she do. She created a simple wish list on Amazon: a blanket for each of her twenty-four students and shared it on the Nextdoor app. Five minutes later, she received a text from one of her neighbors saying that they were looking at the wish list but there were no items needed. Amazed, she reached out to her colleagues to see if she could add their students to the wish list.

In the end, each of the six hundred students in her school received a gift from these generous donors. With the help of colleagues, the blankets were given out at a distribution point to grateful children and their parents. During the summer of 2021, the teacher was contacted by a number of her donors who wanted to know how they could contribute again. She put together a list of school supplies which was quickly filled, and all six hundred students started the new school year with backpacks filled with school supplies. 

On one of the neighborhood forums, someone wrote about how much she appreciated being part of this wonderful event. She said, "On neighborhood forums, there's so much slander, hate, and political stuff. People bash others including teachers. But when something like this comes up, everybody jumps in to help, even the people who have been so negative. It's just absolute community."

In the world of a young child, what matters is being kind and caring, looking out for another, and sharing what you have. Jessie the Elf represents a 2,000-year-old narrative in which a severely disadvantaged child--one born to penniless parents in a drafty barn--would go on to teach the world that it's children who have it right, that our differences are trivial and that love is the thing that matters most. In our troubled times, it's easy to believe that the lesson has been lost. But it hasn't. It's just that sometimes we need the little children to reawaken it in us.

Except from article in Reader's Digest, December 2022

---