By Gretchen Keiser

In the weeks before Christmas, a bassinet sat under the tree in a Dunwoody home, filled with the clothes, blankets, diapers and bottles that a new baby needs.

The two little girls in the family, eight and 10 years old, helped their mother pick out the presents. They chose tiny pairs of booties, and a blanket with a puppy’s face on it. Their parents added some of the practical items: a bottle sterilizer, diapers, pins, lotions, a snowsuit, shirts and blankets.

Piled into the new white bassinet, the gifts nearly overflowed, for a mother-to-be the family doesn’t know and her baby to be born. For the family, a couple in their thirties, and their daughters, and the grandparents and relations, this anonymous gift was to be the only one under the tree at Christmas. When they carried the bassinet into Sister Mary Jacobs’ office at the Catholic Center, they celebrated an alternative to Christmas commercialism.

It began with a talk to the religious education faculty at St. Jude’s the family’s parish, on alternative celebrations. The family “never went overboard on Christmas anyway,” the wife said, but had never done without the gift-giving entirely to “reach out to the body of Christ instead.”

The talk highlighted the many people in need – and the $10 billion that is spent every year at Christmas. It raised the question: “Whose birthday is it anyway?”

The wife was moved to go home and talk about it with the family, including her daughters. During the first week in Advent, they made the decision to give Christmas to someone in need, choosing a mother-to-be sponsored by Crisis Pregnancy Services because of “the new birth that we celebrate at Christmas” and because the girls were delighted with the idea of picking out baby gifts.

Instead of shopping for the immediate family, cards were sent out to relatives, explaining that they were spending the money on gifts for a single mother. The girls shopped and picked presents, and the wife found herself chuckling as she bypassed the long lines at the post office, and in the stores. “I just didn’t have the anxiety I usually have,” she said.

As Christmas neared, and the children began hearing stories in school about all the presents their friends were getting, she became a bit worried. And other adults worried that the children would have no gifts on Christmas Day.

But, she said, the concerns settled after the girls helped carry the bassinet to the office and talked to Sister Mary Jacobs, the program director. “Each of the girls showed me what they picked out and why they had chosen it,” Sister Mary Jacobs said. “I gave them each an ornament to hang on the tree as a remembrance of their gift to someone else in need. Each year they could see that ornament and remember what they did for someone else.”

The baby is due any day, and the young mother had nothing, Sister Mary Jacobs said. “She was thrilled to death. She had no baby bed, she had very few baby clothes. She is babysitting to try to make some money.” The young woman has been living in one of the service’s shelter homes since September, and Sister Mary Jacobs is in the process of finding a place for her to live when the baby comes. In a note to her, the family said how much hope she had given them by choosing to have her baby.

Looking at the gifts in the bassinet, Sister Mary Jacobs said, “I think it was a beautiful idea. I admire them very much for trying something different.”

The consequences of choosing the alternative weren’t really clear until Christmas Eve, after the traditional family dinner and church service ended, the wife said. Afterward, both the girls said they wanted to do something similar next Christmas. The family has decided that next year they will give gifts to prisoners for their children.

As the word spread among friends, people came up to her and said they admired her courage, the wife said. “I want to shout from the mountains that it doesn’t take that much courage to do it,” she said. Her children, and her family, have all they need, she said.

“I think the girls discovered that they had just as good a time without all the gifts,” she said. “I guess a lot of people think if you don’t do that, children won’t have happy childhood memories. My children had no problem with that. It was more of an adult adjustment…It’s a risk, but it becomes very easy. I’m excited. I’m looking forward to doing it again.”

The girls are looking forward to the picture the mother-to-be has promised of that new baby.