I want you to use your imagination. I want you to imagine a world in which every child wakes up on Christmas morning to find a nice gift under the tree.
Your imagination doesn't have to furnish each child with a big, expensive gift, or even one of those "I really wanted one of those because everyone else has one" gifts.
Just try to imagine a nice present, something reasonable that will make the child smile, maybe even make his or her eyes sparkle just a little bit - something that will prompt the child to say, "Thank you," and really mean it.
It'll be something different for every child.
But try to imagine a world in which that such deep thankfulness comes from something at least a tiny bit more frivolous and fun than a warm pair of socks.
I want you to imagine a world in which every child wakes up in a warm bed.
It doesn't have to be a bed in a mansion.
It doesn't have to be the only bed in the child's own bedroom - heck, a lot of us old farts did fine growing up in homes where we shared a bedroom with one or more brothers (or sisters, for the girls).
But it should be a real bed - in a real house.
It shouldn't be some crumpled newspapers spread on the dirt floor in a tin shack.
I don't want you to imagine some ratty old blankets in a corner of a tent in a small wooded area beside Canadian Tire or off behind High Knoll Park.
It would take very little imagination at all for your imaginary world to have children waking up in the back seat of the family car.
That world already exists.
I want you to imagine a world better than that.
I want you to imagine a world in which no child who goes to his or her warm bed every night does so with tears welling in their eyes.
Or with an empty belly grumbling loudly enough to keep him or her awake into the early hours.
I want you to imagine full tummies.
I want you to imagine a world in which food banks and Christmas bureaus are unnecessary.
I want you to imagine a world in which the volunteers who work so desperately to create the world I want you to imagine can go home and spend more time with their own families, and bask in the satisfaction that they are no longer needed by other families that are no longer hungry and cold and alone at Christmas.
I don't want you to imagine a world in which these things are just a reality for the Lower Mainland - although that would already be a world beyond the imagination of many hungry, cold and lonely children and families who live right here, among us, within our own community.
I want you to stretch your imagination outwards, beyond the Lower Mainland, beyond British Columbia, beyond Canada, beyond North America.
I want you to imagine an entire world in which there are no hungry children - a world in which tens of thousands of children do not die every day as a result of hunger-related diseases and maladies.
I want you to imagine a world in which hunger and need no longer drive ordinary people to accept a "need" for war.
I want you to imagine a world in which you are lending a hand. Not necessarily a big hand. You don't have to imagine being a volunteer who risks life and limb in far reaches of the world. Just help out a bit, that's all.
I just want you to imagine a world in which there really is a Santa Claus.
If you can do that, then he's real, after all.
He's you.
Bob Groeneveld is the editor of the Langley Advance, a sister paper of The Record.
