Recently there was an article about people who go around paying off people’s layaways at Christmas time, calling these people “Christmas Angels”. Recently I’d been in a bit of a funk, knowing Cancer is breathing down our necks this year, just waiting for the right moment (which is the wrong moment) to strike.

A member of one of my mom’s groups posted the article in our forum and mentioned how much it touched her. This in turn started a domino effect in our group of 60 women (we all met online in a diamond lover’s forum), and we all donated to one Mom’s account- over eight hundred dollars to help out families who put things on layaway for their kids. She then took the donations (errrr… “gifts”, I hesitate to use the word “donation” considering the bullshit Regretsy had dealt with regarding the difference between “gift” and “donate” buttons) to her nearby KMart and paid off some of the delinquent accounts that held gifts for children.

Unfortunately/Fortunately, other people must have been bitten by the “I need to help someone” bug, as there were only a few accounts left- and we specifically wanted to target FAMILIES.  The way layaway works, people choose things, put their downpayments on them, and the actual item goes into a bin with their name on it. Our ElfMom was able to look in the bins for toys and kid’s items, and found a few that had things like leapster games, a robe, and playdough.

Now, here is where it really hit me. Play-doh is not dirt cheap (like .99 cents), but it’s not expensive, sets can go from 6-15 dollars. These people couldn’t afford to buy a few containers of play-doh at one time, and were applying payments to something that costs less than a week’s worth of coffee at Starbucks. Friends, this broke my heart. While we all knew we were going to help some folks out (as it was we only were able to pay off two accounts- leaving a few cents so they come back to make a payment and find that they had mere pennies left- paying the account in full will close the account- because another/others had gotten there first), knowing what we helped to buy for families made it that much more real. These folks were hoping they were able to get their child play-doh for Christmas, and a few even had delinquent accounts, they couldn’t finish paying for their baby robes and moondough.

After we paid off that one store, ElfMom transferred the rest of the money to two other ElfMoms in different parts of the country, and those Elfmoms will be paying off a few more accounts in Pittsburgh and Cleveland. I can’t help but be SO proud of the group I’m a part of. I am SO happy to know that there are families out there who will be arriving to give the money they worked so hard for – sometimes paying for the toys before a bill just so their kid can have at least a small hope that Santa cares about them- only to find someone helped them.

See, I remember my Mom getting things on layaway. I remember being with her to shop, not really understanding why we were “buying” something that I couldn’t have right away. I wish there had been people like us back then, when my mom was struggling to give us a Christmas she could be proud of. And now, now that I have my girl, I think about just how fortunate we are. Sure, we don’t take pricey vacations, we don’t spend a ton of money on clothes for any of us. but we have money to buy her small gifts that she can enjoy. It’s not a new bike or a leappad, but Piper will not be wanting for anything, where some kids might have been in those three towns we were able to hit.

Right now, I’m pretty damn proud to be a Christmas Angel with this wonderful group of my friends. Knowing some little kid out there is going to have a present under the tree with their name on it because of the kindness of random strangers is something that warms my heart.