The holiday season should be full of hope and joy, but it might not be the case for families facing significant health challenges. When your child has cancer, it’s one of the most stressful seasons you can go through. So how do we as families, friends, and communities help bring hope back to the holidays for these brave families?
Here are just a few things you can do this holiday season.
If there’s a child with cancer in your personal circle of friends or family, you have the wonderful opportunity to make your efforts very personal. Take advantage of it!
While the holiday season is full of festivities, it can be understandably stressful for all of us – not just families working through cancer. Sometimes the best thing you can do is offer practical, tangible help. This can manifest in a variety of ways, but here are a few ideas to put into practice:
Beyond practical help, you can simply give gifts over the holidays. The total cost of cancer treatment – including things like transportation, meals, and medications – can make buying gifts that much more difficult. Before you run out and buy gifts, ask the family for a list of things they really want or need. Focus on these items. You can get together as a group with others to contribute to bigger-ticket gifts.
If you want to give directly to the child with cancer, find out what they love and enjoy. It will bring so much brightness to a dark season to know that they weren’t just given a gift but a thoughtful one at that. Then there are practical gifts that can ease the discomfort of inpatient stays and side-effects: a cozy and fashionable hat to stay warm through hair loss from chemotherapy, a comfortable set of slippers and pajamas for nights at the hospital, or a new stuffed animal friend to go with them in scary moments.
Just because you don’t know a family or child with cancer personally doesn’t mean you can’t spread some holiday cheer.
If you don’t know one of these families, you can still help. Get together with a few friends or come together as a community to put together care baskets. Include things like gift cards for local restaurants, gas, and accessible stores nearby that offer a wide range of products, like Walmart or Target. Add in snacks, a nice stuffed animal, or other little gifts: a bag of gourmet coffee, a scented candle, a cozy throw blanket…your options are limitless! Finding families in your community isn’t difficult: there’s likely to be a lead somewhere in your network.
If not, just call your local children’s hospital’s patient information desk. They can help you navigate the proper procedure for getting gifts to patients, whether you want to drop your gifts off or mail them in.
There are countless organizations out there doing so much good for kids with cancer. There are those focused on cancer research and cures, those offering camps and retreats, providing medical supplies, a sense of community, financial help, transportation aid, and more. We recommend looking for charities at Charity Navigator (charitynavigator.org), a database of charities that you can search by name or cause. They’ll let you know how reliable and reputable the charity is, from financial accountability to impact and results data.
After all, you want to ensure that whatever you give is going to directly help kids with cancer. Not all organizations are worth giving to, and you want to make the biggest impact possible with your donation. If you know the name of a child with cancer, you can donate in their honor, too!
Make this holiday season extra meaningful by supporting all the amazing kids kicking cancer.