‘Twas the night after Christmas, and all through the house . . .

Actually, there was no house—which was the entire point.

Jeff and I had volunteered to spend the evening of December 26 staffing an Outer Banks homeless shelter, hosted this week by our church. We’d felt a little unmoored ourselves this Christmas, with all our parents gone now and no family members close by. Fortunately, some dear friends took us in for Christmas day, and we had a grand time.

But what if we’d had no house and nowhere at all to go? 

It’s almost Thanksgiving. Oh my. At the mention of that word, I start thinking of Christmas, and inevitably wondering if it makes sense to buy gifts for my loved ones that may be a little off the mark and a little more expensive—but that will help people in need.

“Cause marketing,” it’s called. I’m sure you’ve seen the ads. Buy a “compassion scarf,” one urges, and help poor women in India. These kinds of pitches always tug at me, and it’s gotten worse since

Thirty-one years ago Jeff and I moved into a little house on Hatteras Island, here on the North Carolina Outer Banks. Raised in a Delaware suburb, I’d never lived in such a small town. I set about trying to meet our neighbors, who’d seen many outsiders like us come and go. They didn’t pay much heed to us, until it was clear that we were staying.

Bit by bit we were taken into a community of people who were very different from those I’d known before. They fished, ran small stores, repaired houses and cars, and cleaned cottages. They were more open than many of my former suburban neighbors and certainly less pretentious. What you saw was what you got. I loved this about them.

They were also much more conservative than me—which, it turned out, made absolutely no difference at all.