The Voice - Student Newspaper

Offering Thanksgiving traditions to less fortunate

By Michelle Tabatabai-Shahab
Reporter, The VOICE

Thanksgiving is a time to celebrate tradition, family and giving. When you think of Thanksgiving you think of spending time with family members that you don't spend time with on a regular basis, enjoying the company around you and sharing a feast.

Ideally thanksgiving is a time for setting aside judgment and embracing the community around you.

Helping and supporting the people that need it is exactly what the holiday spirit is about.

Senior Citizens, families found homeless due to the economical slip, and college students that couldn't afford a ticket home with prices raised for the holidays tend to be the ideal targets.

Senior citizens that don't have the resources to provide for themselves tend to rely on senior charitable church organizations such a interfaith to support them.

Leader and charity advocate Barbra Carver explains how "most elderly folks rely on charities to provide food for them to continue living. It's a reality that these people live off of cat food for weeks."

Carver goes on to say, "offering a thanksgiving dinner to a person that doesn't have a lot to live for is like giving them their life back, they'd love the invite and even more than that, they'd love the company."

With the recent economical dive that the United States has experienced, families are being put out of their homes due to foreclosure.

The holidays cause an extra strain on families that struggle with the day-to-day costs of living.

While the Central Arizona Shelter Services will have soup kitchens open, to a recently homeless family, an invitation to a traditional thanksgiving dinner is the best gift you can give them for the holidays.

With the cost of travel stuck at an astronomical rate, out-of-state college students are planning to stay put for the holidays. Throwing a thanksgiving dinner party is an easy way to create a memorable thanksgiving dinner with friends in the same situation.

Rather than waste your leftovers and complain about how long you'll be eating stuffing after Thanksgiving share with the less fortunate.

Thanksgiving is a time for giving. If you can give a Thanksgiving dinner, company, conversation, to somebody that otherwise wouldn't have had those traditions this year, then you are making a difference in their life.