DURHAM -- Karen Gray did nearly all of her Christmas shopping Sunday without venturing to a mall, let alone a store. In fact, she went no further than her church, St. Luke's Episcopal on Hillandale Road.
In an hour she bought gifts for her husband, her mother, her son and her great-nieces and nephews - 15 people in all. Most of those gifts she can fit into an envelope or prop up on the branches of a Christmas tree.
A financial analyst for the Duke University Global Health Institute, Gray is among a growing group of Christians who do Christmas differently. They shop at alternative gift fairs where they put their dollars toward donations for poor people in the United States and around the world.
"It's taking off," Gray said, "as people realize we're not in this world alone."
Alternative gift fairs such as the one at St. Luke's Episcopal have been around for 18 years. But increasingly, Christians searching for a more meaningful way to celebrate Jesus' birth are resisting the mass-market appeals, mail-order catalogs and crowded shopping malls in favor of what they hope might be life-changing gifts for others."It broadens the whole mindset," said John Willard, who with his wife, Jean, helped plan the gift fair. "There are ways to give so someone in the world who really needs a gift can get one."
On Sunday - and they plan to resume next Sunday - representatives from 27 nonprofit organizations will have set up tables at Johnson Hall, encouraging people to make donations and receive a small token in return, usually a T-shirt, a pin, a pendant, a refrigerator magnet, or, in the case of Habitat for Humanity, an assemble-your-own bird feeder kit.
This year's participating organizations run the gamut from the American Red Cross, which was taking donations for measles vaccines in developing countries - it takes $1 to vaccinate one child - to WISER, The Women's Institute for Secondary Education and Research, a Duke project that has helped build a boarding school for girls in Kenya.
Many shoppers Sunday morning recognized that giving a card listing a donation made in someone's name is not enough sometimes.
In years past, the Rev. Anne Hodges-Copple, the church rector, bought stuffed animals to represent the real animals she bought through Heifer International, which helps families in developing countries with gifts of chicks, goats or cows. She's a big believer in token gifts. "We all feel there's a place for something touchable," she said. "But you're touching something far more significant than what you've opened."
Alternative gift givers emphasize they're not closet Scrooges who decry merriment. "There are times we should have parties and give lavishly," said the Rev. Ken Sehested, pastor of Circles of Mercy, a small congregation in Asheville. "It's important for the human spirit."
But Sehested, who has published alternative gift ideas on his church's website, circleofmercy.org, said there should be ways to do that without harming people or the environment.
Nonprofits have taken notice of people's desire to raise awareness through gift-giving. In the past few years, humanitarian relief organizations have gotten into the business of publishing glossy, handsomely designed gift catalogs as a way of spurring end-of-year giving. Samaritan's Purse of Boone has a Christmas catalog that allows people to buy farm animals or mosquito nets for people in developing countries.
These days, gifts can buy poor people a home or a school, or they can provide plows, seeds, trees, desks, clean water and medicine. But the beauty of these gifts is that they can teach the receiver about a little corner of the world they may not have known much about.
Last year, for example, Jean Willard made a donation of three soccer balls to a group that distributes them to children in refugee camps. Six months later, when she played with her two grandchildren, ages 3 and 5, they were still talking about those balls, she said, and wondering what become of those refugee children.
"I don't think it helps a kid to get more stuff they see on TV," said Gray, who has bought similar gifts. "It's important for kids to learn the world is bigger than they are."
