Sanders’ savvy season

Halloween is officially over and the holiday season is officially here. 

This season of giving may be one of the best opportunities you will ever have to give back to your family, friends and community as national hardship is upon us.

While the nation looks for answers to a multitude of problems, you have a chance to plan out your gifts this holiday season, and perhaps in doing so realize a little something about yourself. 

Potential gift: On your way down the street, you hear the piercing ding of the Salvation Army’s silver bells. Your hand digs into your pocket for change and a few loose bucks – not because you are trained to respond this way, but because you want to help people in need, no matter how they arrived in their terrible situation. Just giving is enough.

You know that the Salvation Army is a credible organization that does not discriminate in sharing their donations.  

Potential realization: By giving money to a group who will use it for the greater good, without discrimination, you are creating a level playing field for those less fortunate than you.

Giving the gift of opportunity to those in need could mean a better life for the poor in a wealthy nation. You believe in equal access to resources.

Potential gift: You discover that a family friend has lost his or her job. With the holidays are approaching and the threat of their heat being shut off, you decide to help by taking up a collection of foodstuffs and whatever resources people can spare.

This is a small but powerful gift for a family who is less fortunate, a small gift that you hope would be returned to you in the case of your own hardships.

Potential realization: It would be a powerful statement of solidarity if that company had taken a few hits on the whole, instead of laying off its workers during the holiday season. You would have done it because you understand the power of the dollar to keep a family alive.

 If only you and your community owned that company, there would not have been the wasteful spending that brought you to collecting cans for a needy family. You believe in public ownership of production.

Potential gift: You decide to live in the moment this holiday season, cherishing each second for all that it is worth and then some. Life is short, and you are living in the now.

Potential realization: You see your life day-to-day rather than on a continuum. You ascribe to liberation theology.

Final realization: You are a modern socialist. There it is, simple, concise and powerful.

Go back and re-read; there is no tomfoolery here. Equal access, public ownership, liberation theology.

Not so scary now, is it?