There’s one question that I have been asked a few times during this Giftmas week that I wasn’t sure how to answer, and that was — How did this all begin? Why do it?
The reason why I didn’t know how to answer wasn’t some deeply philosophical reason, nor a deeply personal one either. The fact is that I just could not remember what actually inspired me to begin this fundraiser. In my defense, time is a weird and slippery thing and this is the tenth year that we’ve run this fundraiser. Ten years is a lot of water under a bridge — more than enough, as it turns out, to erode away my memory of the specifics around what inspired this.
So, I decided to look it up. Which is no small endeavour because while my friend BD archived my previous blog posts for me when the volume of them became unwieldly in the years between when they did that and now the archives also became a little bit of a beast somehow (I blame software updates somewhere along the line). But I did it.
I did it and I discovered/remembered that the Giftmas blog tour was a thing which existed even before this fundraiser did. I did not try and trace it back to its roots, so I’m not sure how long we were doing it before turning it into a fundraiser. Back then, before it was a fundraiser and for the first couple years after it became one, there was a Rafflecopter/Prize aspect to it, but after it became primarily a fundraiser we let the prize aspect fade away because it became clear quite quickly that people were more interested in donating to help other people than in winning cool things for themselves (and the prizes were a lot of work to organise LOL).
It shifted from being simply a blog tour to being a fundraiser in 2016 when the Edmonton Food Bank was experiencing record levels of demand in the wake of the devastating fire in Fort McMurray wildfire and also a large influx of Syrian refugees in our city. I wanted to do something to help, and adding a fundraising aspect to the pre-existing blog tour was how I chose to do that.
Which sort of answers the question of how, but does leave the question of why. Because surely the Food Bank wasn’t the only place that could have used some extra help that year.
I chose the food bank because when I was young and my mother was a single mother, the food bank — a Christmas hamper — was a big part of our holiday celebrations every year. It was where my mom got the fixings for our Christmas Eve dinner (Christmas was at my grandmother’s), and we ate very well for the last two weeks of the year because of it. It meant one less expense to worry about during a very expensive time of the year.
Later, one year when I was a single mother, full-time student and full-time waitress I also got a Christmas hamper. That hamper meant that I didn’t have to choose between buying the food for a grand holiday feast and buying my kid the present they wanted from Santa Claus (Teletubbies, in case you’d like to know just how old I am lol). It meant I got to do both.
To paraphrase something one of my favourite people in the world said very recently — we all need a little help sometimes. Now that I am privileged enough to be able to give the help rather than receive it, I am very happy to do that.
And look what we’ve done already this year!
Our goal was $1,500 which, because of the magic of bulk-buying and community outreach, translates into 4,500 meals. As of today we have raised $1,510 — with several days left to go. I’m not stopping just because we hit our goal, I want to see how very much more we can raise. How many more people we can help.
Can you contribute?
This is the link to the fundraiser:
https://www.canadahelps.org/en/pages/giftmas-2025/
Every single dollar counts, but if you have none of those to spare right now sharing this link with your friends, family and social media connections can also be incredibly helpful 🙂
One last thing.
Remember how I said time was a slippery thing that often got away from me? Okay, maybe I just implied that last part, but it is a slippery thing that often gets away from me. It did that this month. I wanted to have something festive that I had written to give away as a bit of a gift and a bit of a thank you. But, alas…
I looked over most of the festive stuff I’ve written in the past, and, I gotta say most of it is rather dark. Part of that is probably due to the Advent Ghosts event I participate in each year but some of these stories predated my participation in that. So, I guess the common denominator is me LOL
All that to say, I don’t really have a cheery festive story to share. In part because, clearly, I would have to write one from scratch and also because time got away and I didn’t get one all wrapped up nicely to share.
However. I do have these:
If you click on any (or all) of those cover images it will take you to somewhere to download a free copy of each.
“Blame it on the Bubble Gum” is actually pretty light-hearted and is the story of what happens when a representative from Faerie is sent to observe humankind’s newest technological marvel and becomes distracted by the scent of bubble gum. It even won a short story contest that I entered it in 🙂
Forgotten Lore is a short story anthology some friends and I put together a few years ago. It contains my very dark short story, “The Odin Stone” which I would be afraid of spoiling if I talked about it too much. It does include one of the most thoroughly unlikeable main characters I have ever written.
Dark Drinks is a collection of excerpts from my Dark Waters anthology — several of which are accompanied by recipes for a cocktail or mocktail. Each of the authors came up with (and taste tested) our own recipes. It was a lot of fun. I’m including it because it’s the festive season and at my house that means I’m more likely to make a drink that’s a bit different than my usual.
Thank you once again for helping us reach our goal — let’s see how much higher we can get it 🙂
