In recent weeks, I\u2019ve had conversations with my brothers and sisters about approaching Christmas gift-giving a little differently this year. We\u2019re all adults with pretty well-established lives, and the fact is we don\u2019t really need more \u201cstuff.\u201d Still, we\u2019d like to preserve the Christmas season\u2019s sense of generosity and giving. So, we\u2019ve thought about some alternative ways of giving that we hope will extend the joy of this season to people whose lives are much more precarious than our own.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
If you\u2019re hoping to escape a consumerist Christmas, but still have gifts to put under the tree, there are many web sites and retail outlets that sell \u201cfair trade\u201d products– usually hand-made products that are sustainably produced, and that guarantee a living wage for the people who make them.\u00a0 Some examples are tenthousandvillages.com, and globalexchangestore.com.\u00a0 Catholic Relief Services, the international humanitarian agency of the Catholic Church in the US, offers coffee, chocolate, and handcrafts at crsfairtrade.org<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n There are also many opportunities to make charitable gifts in honor of another person, Catholic Relief Services is offering \u201cshares\u201d in many of their relief projects. So, your gift recipient can be honored by helping to provide food, water, healthcare, and education to people in the developing world.<\/p>\n\n\n\n For additional ways that you can have a better holiday season with less guilt, less stuff, and less time circling the parking lot at the mall, check out the web site www.adventconspiracy.org<\/a> or search the internet for \u201cfair trade gifts\u201d or \u201cone hundred dollar Christmas.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" In recent weeks, I\u2019ve had conversations with my brothers and sisters about approaching Christmas gift-giving a little differently this year. We\u2019re all adults with pretty well-established lives, and the fact is we don\u2019t really need more \u201cstuff.\u201d Still, we\u2019d like to preserve the Christmas season\u2019s sense of generosity and giving. So, we\u2019ve thought about some alternative ways of giving that we hope will extend the … Continue reading Alternative Christmas<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[7],"tags":[21],"class_list":["post-431","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-facts-of-faith","tag-facts-of-faith"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p5FUlW-6X","jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/corporalworks.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/431","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/corporalworks.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/corporalworks.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/corporalworks.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/corporalworks.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=431"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/corporalworks.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/431\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":432,"href":"http:\/\/corporalworks.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/431\/revisions\/432"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/corporalworks.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=431"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/corporalworks.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=431"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/corporalworks.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=431"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}