There are probably a hundred great stories out there about giving during the holiday season. If you are someone who watches the Hallmark Channel Holiday Movies, this story here reminds us of one of those movies. This story comes from the Cranberry Road Winery, a story to share and smile about.
A story told by Christopher Tiffany,
I would normally not write something like this because we do not give in order to receive anything in return such as praise or those kinds of things but we do have a little backstory to everything that I feel is worth telling.
We adopt about 15 families every year for Christmas to ensure the children have a great Christmas no matter what. No matter if the reason the family can not afford Christmas is due to the parents being laid off work or for some other legit reason or even if the parents are not good parents and spend their money on things we would see negatively, the children should not suffer.
In 2015 our business suffered a great loss and we literally lost everything two days before Thanksgiving. People in our community stepped out and helped us get through the toughest time in our lives. Although we had a place to live, we had no money to provide for our children over the holidays. To go from being a family that provides for our self and others in the community to being in a position to not having a means to give gifts to our children was tough. As adults, we don't need anything other than the family around us but the children don't understand that part of life yet. When they go to school and kids are talking about the wonderful gifts they received I can only imagine what it must be like to tell other kids they did not receive anything.
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To our amazement we had people stopping at our house and dropping off gifts for our children. I was absolutely humbled by the outreach of our community and my wife and I decided that for now on we will do our best to give back whenever we can.
During our rebuilding people joined us from all over the state to help get us back on our feet. We have two customers from eastern Washington that used up ALL of their vacation time to be here helping us rebuild.
Giving or paying forward what you are able to is not limited to just Christmas.
We do our best throughout the year to help families in need. During Thanksgiving, we provide free traditional Thanksgiving dinner to anyone that wants to join us at the winery. Giving people with no family or money an opportunity to have a really nice meal free of charge. Our family sits and eats with them and takes the time to talk to and get to know those who join us.
Every Year we post on Facebook that the winery is sponsoring families and to our surprise, many of our customers join us by taking on a large number of families and drop off or ship gifts to the winery and we then deliver them to the school.
We are not able to help everyone but will always do our best.