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This holiday season give back with your grandchildren.

This is the season of giving, but is that message of sharing getting lost in the commercial clutter?

It doesn’t have to be. Grandparents around the country are finding ways — some subtle, some not so subtle — to drive home the message that it can be fun to give.

The key is modeling charitable behavior, says Susan Beacham, chief executive officer of Money Savvy Generation, a company that helps parents and grandparents teach kids how to be financially fit. Tell the grandchildren about the organizations you support and let them see you write a check. Better yet, take them along the next time you volunteer.

Start Small

Call the local mall and ask whether it has a program that matches needy kids with charitable shoppers. If so, take your grandchildren to the mall and help them choose a matching child about the same age. Then, give the grandchildren a budget and let them choose the gift.

If there is no program at the mall, call your place of worship, United Way, or other charity and ask for help finding a needy family with kids your grandchildren’s ages. That’s how the Tuohy family started its Christmas tradition. Instead of just buying for their own Chicago, Ill. nearest and dearest, they buy for 1,200 needy people across the city. Granddaughter Heather Mix, 19, has never done anything on the Saturday before Christmas but attend her family’s Dreams for Kids Holiday of Hope charitable party. The annual event is held in more than 35 cities in seven countries, says founder Tom Tuohy, Heather’s uncle, who started the foundation 19 years ago at the behest of his mom, Patricia Tuohy, Heather’s grandmother.

Make It Annual

Carol Weisman of St. Louis, Mo., calls her family together on Christmas day for a "Joy and Sadness Meeting." They share what made them happy or sad during the year and then lobby for a cause that deserves the family’s philanthropic support that year. They started when Weisman’s kids were early grade-schoolers and she plans to pass along the legacy to her grandchildren, the first of whom is expected in 2008.

“One year, one of the kids was talking about how it irritates him that all of his professional decisions are based on the need to have health insurance,” says Weisman, author of Raising Charitable Children (F. E. Robbins & Sons Press, 1996). That “sadness” turned into a plan to pay for a year’s worth of health insurance for a single mom whose daughter had asthma.

Give It Meaning

For Rose Logston of Ohio and her grandchildren, baking cookies together is a holiday tradition that continues, even with her oldest grandchild, now a teen. The cookies are then shared with the residents of a nearby senior high-rise, where Logston’s mother lives, as well as with other needy families. The baking grandma says the recipients enjoy the delivery from her grandchildren even more than the cookies themselves.

But it was the overwhelming commercialism of Christmas 27 years ago that first led Chicagoan Mary Mitchell to seek joy and comfort in the seven principles of Kwanzaa -- umoja (unity), kujichagulia (self-determination), ujima (collective work and responsibility), ujamaa (cooperative economics), nia (purpose), kuumba (creativity), and imani (faith).

After she became a grandmother ten years ago, Mitchell found it hard to compete culturally for the kids’ attention with Kwanzaa as her only option. Today, she celebrates both holidays, offering a bow to the dominant culture at Christmas, followed up by a healthy dose of meaning through the eight days of Kwanzaa. Her grandchildren and their parents are responsible for one day of delivering the Kwanzaa message. It is Mitchell’s hope that having the kids focus on family and charity, rather than counting the number of gifts they have to open, will instill in them the real meaning of the winter holidays.

Follow The Children’s Lead

Akash Mehta, 9, of Brooklyn, N.Y. is raising money to send to needy children in Afghanistan. To date, he has raised $7,000 to help build a school for girls in the worn-torn country. Next up: a plan to raise money for a women’s organization in the Congo.

While Usha Mehta doesn’t take credit for her grandson’s fund-raising prowess, she and her husband, Ramesh, are among his big supporters year-round, not just during Diwali, the Indian festival of lights, which fell on October 28, 2008.

Chicago-area grandparents Marianne and Stuart Taussig used their grandkids’ love of reading as a way to teach them about charity. Each of their eight grandchildren receives two gifts for Hanukkah. One is a gift for them, the other is a bookmark explaining that a book was purchased in that child’s name and given to a needy child in Israel.

“We try our best to do these subtle things to help our kids not only appreciate what they have, but know that not everybody in the world is as lucky as they are,” says Taussig, whose oldest grandchild is now 12. “They all love books, so they know that getting a new book is a very special thing.”

How do you teach charitable giving to your grandchildren?   25 Answers With my wallet    0.0% With my time    0.0% With my prayers    0.0%

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