Editor's Note: How NPOs Saved Christmas

Alas, Christmas was looking bleak, a sad testament to out-of-control consumerism — consumerism bedecked with tinsel and twinkling lights, but consumerism nonetheless.

And then magic erupted. Or maybe it’s more precise to say that magic wheedled its way into my psyche. It came in the hand of a little girl at the supermarket. In my sentimental mind’s eye, she was an angel, with wispy, golden hair forming a halo around her cherubic face. (In reality, she was probably a bawling toddler with a runny nose and Britney Spears T-shirt.) Her mother had put a small line of groceries onto the conveyor belt and paid with checks from the federal WIC program for low-income, nutritionally at-risk women and their children. When the cashier rang up the few non-WIC-eligible items, the shopper said, “Oh, wait ... add this in.” Then, to the child: “Give the lady the paper, Lucy.”