And so this is Christmas....

I have always been a bit of a waif and stray over the Christmas period. The only-child syndrome -- no siblings and no cousins, aunts, or uncles within thousands of miles.
Not a holiday that really impacts me greatly. I don't put up a tree; there is no wreath on my condo door and I am not traditionally religious.
The only vestiges of the festive season around my livingroom are the Christmas cards sent by those who still go through the niceties of the season. (Much appreciated, by the way!)
I am not the Grinch...far from it. Although, I believe I do have that reputation. But as experienced by the odd green character from Dr. Seuss... even the Grinch finally got with the program.
By all the world's standards, I have a lot to be thankful for. Place to live? Check. Recent model car? Check. Enough food? Check. A bank account with a total above zero? Check? Some meaningful work, albeit not as much as I would like? Check. A few good friends? Check.
But I had a lesson this week in humility.
I work a few months of the year as a senior editor at a large publishing company in downtown Toronto. Nice desk, nice computer, cheap and good food in the company cafeteria and a great boss.
There is also a lady who comes around every morning around 11 a.m. to empty my trash. There is never much in my rubbish; a few sheets of copy paper, maybe a coffee cup, a banana peel.
She empties my container. I briefly turn around, smile and say thank-you. I often wonder if many other people even do that much, or if she is invisable.
I casually mentioned to one of my co-workers earlier in the week that it might be nice to have a "whip round" for the cleaning lady. For those who don't speak Brit, a "whip round" is a small collection of money.
There are only five or six of us, so it wasn't going to be much of a haul at five or ten bucks a head. Since Christmas Eve is a half work-day and we were not sure if she would be at work, today was presentation day. When our hard-working friend came around to empty our trash, my colleague to whom I had made the collection suggestion had put together a lovely card, stuck a small ribbon and a candy cane on the envelope, and we presented "our lady of the recycling" with our small offering. It was maybe $30 or $40.
I am still shaken by the reaction. Most of us have so much and often forget that other people, even in our very midst, often have so little. And sadly, expect no more.
Our lady hails from a far off land. She commutes by train early every morning from the outer suburbs of Toronto to come in to our glass tower to do what most of us consider menial work. I don't know much more about her than that. I do not know if she is married or has children. I do not know if Canada is all that she expected. But I do know she is happy to have a job.
And I do know that today, this Grinch was very close to tears. I have never been hugged so hard or so often by someone for so little. It was little hardship to me to toss in a few dollars for someone I truly believed deserved a small acknowledgement. But her reaction was as if we had all given her the winning ticket on the lottery. It wasn't one million dollars, it was, well, very little.
As Dr. Seuss might say, "She hugged us all, the tall and the small. And for such a small token; our savings far from broken."
Well you get the picture.
And that is what Christmas really should be all about. At least for me. It doesn't matter where I go or what I have to do on Dec. 25th -- it doesn't matter if I just stay home and watch TV and eat a frozen turkey dinner.
What matters is that one person, who did not expect it, was made happy...totally surprised and grateful for such a small, small gesture. And in return, "our lady of the recycling" gave us so much more than we gave her.