The economic news this season is gloomy. A state budget makes the governor cry, my personal budget makes me sad and my children’s budgets make them anxious. What could possibly lift our spirits during the gift giving season of Christmas?

The answer is obvious: giving gifts.

Volunteers give the gift of time to fill a need and stay active, build community and feel better.

Our church volunteers, particularly the youth, got an extra thrill this Thanksgiving. Our youth organized a record number of food packages for hungry families.

Two days before Thanksgiving the relief organization Serve Wenatchee Valley was stunned by 200 more families to feed. It began emergency calls to churches. Our church took their first call, and said we’ll feed them all.

In a guest editorial in the Seattle Times, David Earlings sees a compassion boom from a rise in volunteerism as incomes fall.  People volunteer more because they see the need and have time, sometimes because they’re working less. Under our clear skies, people seem willing to volunteer with one possible exception: they’re hesitant to ask for money.

But even small gifts work wonders, as I discover every year at an annual anonymous gift exchange party.

Everyone wraps a worthwhile or frivolous gift costing less than $10. People pick from the wrappings or choose someone else’s gift already opened. It’s amazing how energized people get from such modest gifts.

Karen and I shopped together and I instantly grabbed a snuggie, a blanket with arms in it.  Karen warned that unwanted gifts like that come back year after year and I may get stuck with it.

She had to explore the store’s options.  Finally she found a perfect wooden nutcracker. I said, “Are you kidding? Nobody will want another nutcracker.”

Our gifts must have been wrapped wrong or people spotted us bringing them.  They were the last two packages chosen.

A friend opened Karen’s nutcracker and seemed pleased because he collects them. Another friend unwrapped my gift to see the snuggie box and got excited because she always wanted one.

Quickly she worried she’d be disappointed by something inside a used snuggie box. Her excitement built as she snapped each scotch tape on the box lid.  It might be a snuggie. It was! We all enjoyed her excitement.

Our reactions amaze me. Everyone could have bought those gifts, but getting them through a surprise gifts makes a huge difference.

We must confess we came away excited about homemade jams and an unopened bottle of whiskey created in 1970. We wouldn’t have them to share this Christmas without the gifts and a fun party to boot.

Of course big gifts help too, as a friend reminded me. The widow of a Madoff investor who withdrew $7 billion agreed to give it all back. The grateful trustee charged with recovering Madoff funds believes victims may now get close to half their money back, far better than people expected.

The widow wanted to return the money because it belonged to other people, and she wanted to get on with charitable giving from the remainder of her estate.

She said, “I believe that this settlement honors what [my husband] Jeffery would have wanted, which is to return this money so that it can go directly to the victims of Madoff. I am absolutely confident that Jeffery was in no way complicit in Madoff’s fraud and want to underscore the fact that neither the trustee nor the U.S. Attorney has charged him with any illegal conduct.”

For uplifting spirits, it’s not the economy, stupid. It’s the gift giving.

Got a comment on Jim’s column? Shoot us an email at [email protected], or visit his blog at blog.jamessrussell.com.