Christmas in America was not always this bountiful.
Florence Samuels remembers growing up in New York City in the mid-1940s when Christmas morning for her meant rushing to the Salvation Army to snag one of the gift bags prepared for poor children.
Samuels, 76, now of Chattanooga, recalls what it felt like to be needy in post-WWII America. Back then, a little Salvation Army gift bag with a tic-tac-toe game and a pair of earmuffs was a treasure, she says.
"Those gifts were a good part of our Christmas," Samuels remembers. "We didn't get very much back then."
In those days, she lived with her grandmother in Greenwich Village in Lower Manhattan. Her grandma was a janitor and her mother, who had earlier split with her father, traveled around to work in mica plants. Mica is a mineral used at the time in consumer items such as vacuum tubes and toasters.
"We were poor," Samuels says flatly. "Our little apartment was sad."
By the 1940s, the Salvation Army was well established in New York. The Christian ministry started in 19th-century England and jumped the pond to New York in 1880. By the middle decades of the 20th century, the Salvation Army was part of the city's safety net.
Besides the earmuffs, there were sometimes gloves in the Salvation Army gift bag, Samuels remembers, and there were always a couple of pieces of fruit and a handful of nuts.
As often happens, Samuels' hardscrabble childhood actually became an asset.
Today she is the office manager for the Generosity Trust, a Chattanooga Christian organization which, among other things, provides scholarship assistance to more than 400 people pursuing seminary educations.
Even though philanthropy is at the center of her career now, she has always made time for volunteering. Interestingly, one of her favorite volunteering roles is bell-ringing at one of the Salvation Army's red kettles that dot retail centers around the city. That her life has gone full circle from Salvation Army beneficiary to bell-ringer is an irony that has not been lost on her.
"I love it," she says of ringing the bell. "It's like sales. Some of my jobs have been in sales. I even used to sell cars."
Samuels says that being a successful bell-ringer is all about the pitch.
"You have to put a smile on your face and get personal," she says. "I remember that once a guy held out a $10 bill and said, 'Oh, I don't have change.'
"I smiled and said Merry Christmas, and he said, 'Just take it all.'"
At Thanksgiving, she helps out on the Salvation Army serving line providing meals to the homeless, and she helps pack hundreds of food boxes for the poor.
Samuels has done Christian mission work in Africa, India and Russia. Once she broke an ankle while in the Sudan and ended up sharing her Christian message while sitting in a hospital room.
Today, she also is active in her church and leads a Bible study at the Silverdale Detention Facility.
But the constant through her life has been the Salvation Army bell -- a golden tone that resonates across centuries and animates the holiday that millions hold dear.
Contact Mark Kennedy at mkennedy@timesfree press.com or 423-757-6645. Follow him on Twitter@TFPCOLUMNIST. Subscribe to his Facebook feed at www.facebook.com/mkennedycolumnist.