Giving Kids Presents Anonymously Might Be the Hottest Trend of the Holiday Season Liz Dwyer - TakePart
go to original December 22, 2014

It’s definitely that time of year when the spirit of gift giving is in the air. If you headed to the mall this past weekend, you know it was packed with people looking for the perfect presents for their friends and relatives. But with one in four Americans living in concentrated poverty, not every mom or dad has the means to walk into a store and hand over cash or a credit card to buy the latest doll or Lego Minifigure scientist set for their kids.

It turns out that a few seriously generous folks in Massachusetts are taking the holiday spirit to the next level. They’re heading into Toys R Us stores across the state and paying off the layaway balances of customers whom they don’t even know.

Early last week, a man in the layaway payment line at a Toys R Us in Woburn, Mass., handed over $1,200 to settle the accounts of the eight customers who were behind him. On Wednesday, a “layaway angel” headed into a Toys R Us in Bellingham, Mass., and paid the amount owed on 150 layaway accounts - every single one at the store - to the tune of $20,000. On Friday, another anonymous woman paid more than $20,000 to clear the balances on at least 125 accounts at two Toys R Us stores in the cities of Auburn and Framingham.

“These families are obviously struggling, and they’re putting things on layaway, and I’m able to help them,” the woman who paid the amount owed in Auburn and Framingham told MyFoxBoston. “There’s never enough to do. There’s always more to do.”

Account holders have reacted to the news with a mixture of shock and gratitude.

Read the rest at TakePart

Photo: Flickr

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