The Cambridge Community Christmas Dinner invited volunteers to the American Legion Hall on Christmas Day. They asked people to help cook meals, clean and set the tables, and drive dinners to people who couldn’t make it themselves or didn’t want to be seen in public.

(Above, the volunteers cooking Christmas Dinner.)

The non-profit community group has only one mission: making sure everybody who wants or needs a good homemade Christmas dinner can get one. Then, the group – volunteers included teachers, nurses, homemakers, farmes, transplanted New Yorkers, all volunteers  – dissolves until the next Christmas. We’re in for next year.

Say what you will about country people; they never forget people with low incomes and needy and rush to help whenever possible.

This was just what Maria and I needed – something that would make Christmas real for us and honor the true spirit of the holiday, which is not shopping for bargains or fighting at family dinners.

Lots of people have lovely Christmas dinners with their families. Many people don’t, but you don’t hear much about them.

We are inventing our idea of a meaningful Christmas, and helping other people is the core of it.

It’s gratifying to meet people in our community who come together to do this repeatedly. It means something in such an angry and divided country.

(The tables were all set and ready and soon full of people.)

If you live in the country, as we do, you will come nose to nose with a decimated economy and culture and a lot of poverty.

This is little money around here; it is not the realm of tech smarties or billionaires; they have all gone to the cities to blow up housing prices.

This is a big reason why so many country people dislike cities and see them as elitist and unfair.

Maria and I jumped at the chance to deliver some of the dinners to those who needed them. Everyone one of the five families was in our town, and together, they needed to feed 17 people.

(Volunteers and organizers helped us load up the meals in the car. They were neatly and securely packaged.)

We got a carefully detailed list of the names and addresses of the people waiting for their meal, and we used GPS to figure out where they all were and what the fastest way to get to them was.

It was a beautiful experience for us, to see these people, some of whom we knew – some were elderly and unable to travel or too weak to cook – and hear how grateful they were to get their dinner delivered.

One woman – I had to carry the food inside and put it on her walker; she couldn’t handle it by herself. She was so grateful she pressed $10 into my hand to thank me.

I said we didn’t do this for pay and couldn’t accept her money, but she was so adamant I said I would donate it to the Community Committee. She said that was okay, and I donated.

We saw some poverty, and we saw some trouble.

One woman said she couldn’t take time out to cook because the fighting in her family was so bad nobody wanted to eat together, and she didn’t know how or what to cook for them.

She was, she said, in the middle of a dreadful family fight. She was happy to get the meal.

People were waiting at their front doors for us to visit, expecting us.

It took us about two hours to get all the nicely wrapped meals to the people who had asked for them. Nobody was turned down; people who could pay did, and people who couldn’t get a meal without any questions asked.

The women who prepared the meals were sensitive, careful, and proud of what they were doing. They worked hard and efficiently; I kept thinking of Willa Cather’s stories about small towns gathering together to help people experiencing poverty and hunger.

The American Legion offered its spacious meeting room; it is often used to help people in need, including farmers injured in accidents or families challenged by Cancer and other illnesses.

We both were happy to be doing something rather than bitching and whining about the news and the cost of things.

(The children of Cambridge pitched in to make beautiful Christmas cards; there was one at every seat and table. Up here, kids are asked to participate. Farm kids don’t get to spend much time on TikTok.) 

The morning was the best example of a community that cares and where people get help if they need it. It made our day and left us feeling great; we had discovered Christmas. This is what Jesus Christ urged his followers to do.

It sometimes feels like he has been overlooked in all the chaos, media, politics, and greed.

We’re heading to Vermont for two days tomorrow and plan to cut back on our work somewhat until the end of the week. That’s also a part of Christmas – peace and contemplation. We’ll be doing some tomorrow, along with some good books.

While delivering food, we returned to the American Legion and bought lunch for ourselves. It was delicious – ham, coleslaw, squash, cheesecake, apple sauce, and potatoes – as much as people wanted to eat. It was full of people.

We sat and talked with people from the food community and people who came in for the food. This is what we wanted for Christmas: a day of compassion, meaning, and empathy—a Happy Christmas for us, and I hope, for everyone reading this.

And a special Happy Christmas to the Cambridge Community Christmas Dinner. You made Christmas a lot better for a lot of people. So did our community.