Today, the Bishop Maginn Amazon Christmas Gift Wish List for needy children at the school went up online.

Christmas is a beautiful and sometimes difficult time at Bishop Maginn High School, a lot of joy, a lot of need.

I asked if the school might create an Amazon Christmas Children’s Gift List so that the Army of Good might help needy families and teachers buy inexpensive but wanted gifts for their children.

Half of the students at Bishop Maginn can’t pay the full tuition and some families sleep under blankets because they can’t afford heating oil in the winter. I’ve seen that some kids wear flip-flops to school in the winter. We have shoes waiting for them when we find them.

We’ve sent the families a lot of blankets and socks and sleeping bags since the cold weather, but we know that some teachers and some parents simply can’t afford to buy even the simplest gifts for Christmas.

Today, Principal Mike Tolan and Sue Silverstein collected a list of presents that teachers, grandparents, and parents have asked for as gifts their children want for Christmas. There are eighteen items on the list, they range from $8 to $24.

There’s a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle walkie-talkie $24.99; A Baby African Doll Toy, ,$7.99, Leggo Building Toy, $27.99; Superhero Avengers Collectible Model, $16.99, a Modern Comic Coloring Kit, $16.99, Girl’s Make-up Palette, $9.99, Race Car Radio Remote Control, $15.95, VTech Spin and Learn Color Flashlight, $9.84, Fisher-Price Singin’ Soccer Ball, $11.99, Rocky’s Recycling Truck, $12.99, and some cars and dolls and one doll stroller.

I hope we can help get these children the toys they want. Many of you have asked me when this list will come out, so here it is. Thanks to Sue Silverstein for working to put it out so quickly.

This list is very much in the spirit of Christmas for me, a holiday much more about giving than receiving.

“The Christmas spirit,” wrote J.J. Packer in Knowing God, “does not shine out in the Christian snob. For the Christmas spirit is the spirit of those who, like their Master, live their whole lives on the principle of making themselves poor – spending and being spent – to enrich their fellowmen, giving time, trouble, care and concern to do good to others – and not just their own friends – in whatever way there seems need.”

I hope we can support it.  The gifts are inexpensive. There are not too many.

On the Amazon Wish Lists, you can buy the gifts directly and have them shipped to the school. There are no middlemen or administrative costs. Sue Silverstein, the art and theology teacher, will distribute the gifts, she put the list together.

We’ve had great luck with these lists, they are so easy to use.

If you need it for Amazon, the school’s address is Bishop Maginn  High School, 75 Park Avenue, Albany, N.Y., 12202.