Alternative gifts include helping villagers in the Dominican Republic open a produce stand.
By Sandi Dolbee
UNION-TRIBUNE RELIGION & ETHICS EDITOR
You can buy four stemless wine glasses for your auntie or provide a month's worth of nutritional supplements for 75 children in Darfur in her name.
You can get a box of chocolate truffles for your boss or give him a card saying his gift is buying two days of groceries for a family of four in the USA.
You can purchase a “Halo 3” for your nephew, to go with his “Halo” and “Halo 2,” or show him how he's helping plant 60 new trees in Haiti.
In the culture of alternative shopping, holiday consumers are redefining the notion of a gift that keeps on giving.
One of the largest ventures is Alternative Gifts International, started in 1980 when a Presbyterian from Pasadena wanted to model noncommercial Christmas giving for the children in her church.
Harriet Prichard's alternative markets caught on faster than chili pepper Christmas lights. By 2004, 325 alternative Christmas markets were held in 43 states, collecting more than $17 million for projects around the world.
Now headquartered in Wichita, Kan., Alternative Gifts International has expanded to online shopping (alternativegifts.org). And it's not just about Christmas. The site offers items to celebrate Hanukkah, Ramadan and other special occasions.
Here's how it works: Buyers select certain purchases from a catalog of choices – say, $28 for rice for Filipino farmers or $300 for AIDS support for an African young person for one year. Cards about each gift can then be given to the person for whom the gift was given.
Solana Beach Presbyterian Church caught the alternative holiday spirit 22 years ago, and now its annual market is one of the largest of its kind in the country. Last year, more than 500 shoppers spent $125,000 on projects ranging from groceries for Camp Pendleton families to malaria medicine for Ethiopians.
“It does a lot of good; that's why we do it,” says Ron Ross, who for 17 years has co-chaired the church's Alternative Christmas Market, which kicks off its season tomorrow.
Susan Hoehn, who helped start the Solana Beach church's market, said the motivation behind it was to make giving to missions “a real vibrant and exciting experience.” She still gets a kick out of sitting down with the catalog and buying gifts she thinks will mean something to each family member.
This year, Solana Beach Presbyterian's market offers three dozen projects – a combination of items for Alternative Gifts International and the church's own mission lists.
“We see it as a quest to reclaim Christmas from the mall madness to God so loved the world that he gave something precious, which is life,” says the Rev. Tom Theriault, pastor of missions and outreach.
He likes to think of it as giving a gift that doesn't fall out of fashion. Whether it's a bicycle to allow a woman to get around so she can support her family or keeping gorillas from extinction, “these are things that add life and health and wholeness to our planet.”
“Our people love it,” Theriault says. “They really get the point.”
Customers are not limited to church members. The markets are open to the public. So is the church's online shopping site (solanapres.org).
Theriault and Ross credit the market's success on several factors. “This is a very giving church,” says Ross. “Inwardly strong and outwardly focused,” says Theriault.
So what do you say to a kid who wanted “Halo 3” but instead got a stove for a family in Haiti?
No comments:
Post a Comment