FIRST PERSON | The Christmas hamper I got as a kid taught me ...

Linda Trinh · for CBC First Person

· Posted: Dec 25, 2024 4:00 AM EST | Last Updated: 6 hours ago

This First Person column is the experience of Linda Trinh, who lives in Winnipeg. For more information about CBC's First Person stories, please see the FAQ.

We didn't have much growing up. My family immigrated from Vietnam to Canada when I was three. When my dad died a few years later, my mom did her best to provide for me and my older sister, Jenny, and make a home in our small rented green house in Winnipeg's West End. 

That meant sewing clothes for us, clipping coupons and serving rice and vegetable soup for dinner, again and again. During our first few winters, we strung lights on our indoor palm-tree-like tall plant. It wasn't the traditional Christmas tree, but it still made us happy. 

Then, one December evening, two strangers came to the house and delivered a hamper. This was a surprise to me. Their delivery felt like the "Christmas morning" magic of the movies and commercials on TV. 

Ten-year-old me couldn't wait. I tore into that cardboard box to discover cans of beans, peaches, corn, dried pasta and some things we had never seen before. Even after moving to Canada, my mom cooked mostly Vietnamese food. She didn't quite know what to do with the large frozen turkey in the hamper. In the end, she made a version of vịt tiềm, a stew usually made with duck and mushrooms. It was tasty but I was tired of eating the endless turkey after a few days. That winter we were also introduced to boxed mashed potatoes. Wondrous potato snowflakes mixed with butter and salt – how yummy!

And the best part was when I unwrapped a pristine blond Barbie. This doll was unlike the ones I got from garage sales with frizzy hair and crayoned faces. At that moment, I felt special and cared for — all because of the generosity of community members.

I later learned that this hamper came to us thanks to the Christmas Cheer Board. It is a community-driven and grassroots team that distributes more than 20,000 hampers each holiday season of food, toys and cheer to people in Winnipeg living below the poverty level. I'm not sure how my mom came to learn of it. She didn't share very much ever and I knew not to ask.

We continued to receive hampers for several years until my mom found steady work at the sewing factory. We never got a turkey for ourselves after that, yet my family could get our own presents, even small ones.

Now as an adult, living in Winnipeg, with two kids of my own, when I think back to that time, I'm still enveloped by that feeling of care. This childhood experience inspires me to want to, in some way, have a positive impact on someone else. In 2019, my kids were collecting food donations at their school for the food bank and I thought we should do something as a family. 

This is the fourth year my husband, Ryan, my kids Lexi and Evan and I are sponsoring our hamper through the Christmas Cheer Board after getting matched with a local family. 

Every year, we shop for the food as a family — Evan pushing the cart and Lexi checking off the items on the provided list. We get gifts for the kids, wrap them and deliver the hamper to the family's home. My kids enjoy selecting gifts they would have picked out for themselves for the children — knowing what other children would appreciate.

In the first year, our Cheer Board family was a single mother and her four kids. Delivering the hamper through the snow to a house very much like the green house I lived in as a kid, a shiver ran down my spine. How strange is the circle of life.

My then-eight-year-old daughter wrote a story called "The Hamper." Even though her spelling wasn't perfect, her feelings are clear: "I am grateful for what I have and I am also generise and nice to people. If people do not have as much as you be kind and give something to them."

There are so many people in our communities struggling with the basics. In Winnipeg, and across Canada, many depend on food banks and community resources for warm clothing, shelter and support for their personal challenges. There is also much conflict and division in the world. Fear and distrust of people who are different from us, who have a different perspective and live their lives in a different way. 

Sometimes I'm overwhelmed by it all. What can I do? What action could I take in my ordinary life? Mostly I write. Focusing on finding ways to connect. 

Sponsoring a hamper, being involved in that act with my kids and husband, is also one small contribution. Putting together and delivering a hamper is an opportunity to share a moment with a stranger. For both families to say: "I see you and you see me." 

It's also a chance to teach my kids that as people, no matter what race, religion, background or other factors of identity, we are all trying to do our best, feed our families and live life in a meaningful way. This is my act of connection, neighbour to neighbour, human to human, with empathy and hope.

And my hope is for a kid to find magic in potato snowflakes, to feel cared for, and to carry those feelings into their future.

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