SRQ Daily Columnist Diana Hamilton, after living 35 years in Sarasota, labels herself a pragmatic optimist with radical humorist tendencies and a new found resistance to ice cream.

Yesterday in the garage at Publix, I stopped to chat with a woman I’ve known for years but only recently started getting to know. She has a shop in Burns Court and when I asked how it was going, she mentioned a customer who took serious offense to  “Happy Holidays.” We mulled that around for a minute, shook our heads at how kinda goofy people can be about such things and then said goodbye. I was headed to my truck and she into the store when we both turned and, laughing, hollered back at each other, “Happy Holidays”. It was then I heard a voice behind me. A man wearing a naughty or nice Santa hat in a convertible crammed with huge stuffed animals dressed as elves glowered, pointed his finger at me and growled, “It's Merry Christmas damn it! “

Last year I submitted a short piece to the local paper in hopes of raising money for Sanctuary Sarasota (AKA Trinity Without Borders 501c3) to provide gifts for homeless kiddos for Christmas. And don’t ya know that one story about my tough empty stocking childhood triggered something in ordinary folks and caused Sanctuary Sarasota to receive enough toys and money to make Christmas for around 50 kiddos.

We also got a call from Rich Carroll, whose organization Venice Challenger Baseball—in addition to its mission of making the joy of swinging a bat and catching a ball possible for children who for various reasons would not normally get to play—has over the last 17 years gifted to more than 2,800 kiddos that quintessential, but for many families unattainable, childhood accessory, new bicycles.

Rich reached out again this year to invite us down for pizza lunch and to meet Santa (quite possibly arriving by helicopter.) The catch—how to get 20 kiddos plus parents to Venice and back home with a load of bicycles? It took three phone calls. As they did last, our trucker pals Paul Caragiulo and Danny Bilyeu plus Grace Carlson and friends from her church will meet this Saturday at 10am to convoy our giggling wiggling crowd down the pike to Venice.

Some people say Merry Christmas; for others Happy Holidays feels more fair, more inclusive of the beliefs and ways of others. I’m a Southern heathen, unbaptized and unrepentant, and I don’t have a preference, but if I did the Yiddish word,” mitzvah”—a good deed—speaks most perfectly to the point of giving for not only this time of year but everyday of every year.

Each time you hold open the door, or let some poor lost somebody from Ohio in ahead of you in traffic, pay a month's rent on the port-a-let at Sanctuary or give four hours of your Saturday to hook some kiddos up with bikes, you’ve done a mitzvah. And that catch in your throat, extra beat of your heart is a blessing in your life and in ours as well because as we allow our individual selves to do better/feel better, we spread the better around.

As to angry Santa in the Publix garage, I’ll leave you with these words a friend, Joe J, posted on facebook, “….the boat is big enough for all of us. And the man who lived that tenet is the man who gave his name to Christmas. If he can share the season, I’m sure I can too.”

SRQ Daily Columnist Diana Hamilton, after living 35 years in Sarasota, labels herself a pragmatic optimist with radical humorist tendencies and a new found resistance to ice cream.