OMAHA, Neb. (AP) — The young father stood in line at the Kmart layaway counter, wearing dirty clothes and worn-out boots. With him were three small children. He asked to pay something on his bill because he knew he wouldn’t be able to afford it all before Christmas. Then a mysterious woman stepped up to the counter…. “She told him, ‘No, I’m paying for it,’” recalled Edna Deppe, assistant manager at the store in Indianapolis. “He just stood there and looked at her and then looked at me and asked if it was a joke. I told him it wasn’t, and that she was going to pay for him. And he just busted out in tears.”…. At Kmart stores across the country, Santa seems to be getting some help: Anonymous donors are paying off strangers’ layaway accounts, buying the Christmas gifts other families couldn’t afford, especially toys and children’s clothes set aside by impoverished parents.
The older I get, the more cynical I find I’m becoming. Perhaps it’s the inevitable byproduct of watching people looking out for #1 and holding others to standards they would never dream of holding themselves to. Perhaps it’s just that after witnessing so much self-interest, self-righteousness, and self-absorption, I find it difficult at times to see the good in people. Not that I’ve completely lost faith in humanity, but sometimes I look around me and wonder how we became so wrapped up in and completely devoted to “me-first”.
Somewhere warm and breezy, Ayn Rand is snickering into her PBR….
I’m thankful that once a year Christmas rolls around, because the holiday season invariably yields a trove of stories of people doing nice things for others because…well, because they can. It’s refreshing to relearn that sometimes people really are capable of amazing acts of self-sacrifice, and that quite often these acts are carried out in stealth mode, by someone not necessarily looking for recognition or acknowledgement.
Sometimes, just doing a good thing seems to be enough.
Dona Bremser, an Omaha nurse, was at work when a Kmart employee called to tell her that someone had paid off the $70 balance of her layaway account, which held nearly $200 in toys for her 4-year-old son.
“I was speechless,” Bremser said. “It made me believe in Christmas again.”
Dozens of other customers have received similar calls in Nebraska, Michigan, Iowa, Indiana and Montana.
The benefactors generally ask to help families who are squirreling away items for young children. They often pay a portion of the balance, usually all but a few dollars or cents so the layaway order stays in the store’s system.
The phenomenon seems to have begun in Michigan before spreading, Kmart executives said.
“It is honestly being driven by people wanting to do a good deed at this time of the year,” said Salima Yala, Kmart’s division vice president for layaway.
The good Samaritans seem to be visiting mainly Kmart stores, though a Wal-Mart spokesman said a few of his stores in Joplin, Mo., and Chicago have also seen some layaway accounts paid off.
You see, there’s a lesson to be learned here, one that we all could benefit from. Christmas isn’t about the grand push to support the American retail sector. It’s not all about buying. Sometimes it really can be about giving for the sake of giving.
In these mean-spirited times, it’s good to know that there’s still a spark of humanity and decency that burns among us. It doesn’t take much to transact an act of kindness like paying off someone’s layaway purchases, but it can go a long ways towards reminding us what Christmas is supposed to be about.
Now if we could just figure out how to carry this over into the remaining 11 months….
