As the holidays approach, many offices, schools, families and individuals will embrace the spirit of giving by coming together to make the season merry and bright for children and families who need a little help making ends meet this Christmas. Toy drives, “adopting” a family, and other acts of kindness reach their zenith around December. It feels good to give… but TikTok creator Annie (@mom.behind.the.scenes) is urging folks to really think about what this kind of giving looks like and what it should look like.
Annie describes herself as someone with privilege, but who has lived in low-income communities. As a child, she lived in a children’s home with her siblings and her own children also experienced foster care.
“I think there’s an idea, a concept, that people who are low-income should just be thankful for whatever they receive. Whatever we give them, they should be thankful for it … because we gave it to them. If you have not been on the receiving end of some of that, you may not have a full understanding of what that looks like.”
There’s privilege, she explains, in being able to request and receive a specific toy — a Barbie, for example — and not receive “the Dollar Store Barbie that will last 24 hours and then break.” But kids who rely on toy drives for the holidays? They’re probably going to get that cheaper Barbie alternative instead of what they asked for.
“Everybody tells you you should be very thankful for the Dollar Store Barbie,” she continues. “Why? Because somebody else said so, because you’re low-income.”
She says this mentality is about the giver feeling good, not about actually supporting the receiver.
“If we’re going to buy things for people for Christmas, if we are going to donate toy drives, if we’re going to adopt a family, if we are going to take that step of empathy and compassion, can we fully consider the people we are purchasing for and what matters to them.”
Perhaps it does not surprise you to learn that Annie has received a lot of pushback from other folks on the internet. A lot of them boiling down to “beggars can’t be choosers.” In fact, among the many responses Annie has made to comments on her original video, response to this comment is one she lists as “the one” people should listen to all the way through.
“It breaks my heart as I listen to the way people speak about children in need,” she says.
As a child in a group home, Annie asked for a stuffed animal one year, and was happy to receive it. But her brother and sister asked for more specific and higher cost items. Her brother wanted a ventriloquist dummy and her sister wanted a Cabbage Patch doll (just like every other child in the 1980s). But here’s what people perhaps don’t understand.
“None of us were asking strangers for those gifts: we were asking Santa, or a church, or angels,” she explains. “Us asking for the things we asked for, that’s no different than children today asking for iPads.”
She goes on to talk about being involved in church as an adult and being disheartened listening to the way congregants talked about the people who accepted the services they offered, like busing, food banks, or toy drives.
“My family often needed those services,” she says, “But because we were in church we were somehow seen as deserving or worthy.”
One year, when her family needed help providing gifts for her children at Christmas, her daughter asked for toothbrushes and socks and was praised by others for her selflessness.
“She was not selfless: she just never got what she asked for,” Annie explains. “And she knew we didn’t have any money and she didn’t allow herself to dream.”
“These kids are not asking hard-working people for money,” she continues. “They’re asking miracle workers. Imaginary beings who can produce anything, because that’s what we teach them. We’re asking the children in need to not believe in Santa. … The idea that we have to shame an entire family by marking out barcodes and writing ‘DONATED’ on the box, it’s sad. It’s sickening.”
It’s an important idea to mull over as we’re signing up to help others this season. Because children whose parents, for whatever reason, can’t give them presents under the tree are no different from any other child. Right down to the fact that they may be entirely unaware of their family’s financial situation. They don’t know asking for an American Girl doll is a massive ask: they just know it’s their #1 wish this year. They go to the same schools, watch the same commercials, and walk through the same toy aisle at Walmart or Target as the kid who’ll get everything they asked Santa for this year. They know what they want. And, like any other kid, they may not always get it. But to automatically dismiss their hopes and wishes because they should be “grateful?” That doesn’t sound like the spirit of giving to me…
