Disasters, Christmas make us a little nicer to our fellow man

What do Christmas and natural disasters have in common besides the aftermath sometimes leaving your home in varying degrees of disarray?

Mark White is Editor of The News Journal.

The answer is that both of them tend to bring out the best in people, and make us forget our differences for a little while.

Let’s take the recent tornado activity that decimated parts of western Kentucky along with causing extensive damage in other states.

The Kentucky United Tornado Disaster Relief Telethon on Dec. 14 raised over $3 million in donations over the course of four hours. University of Kentucky Basketball Coach John Calipari helped lead the event.

Even though Kentucky was scheduled to play Ohio State in basketball four days later, Ohio State Basketball Coach Chris Holtmann donated $50,000 during the telethon. He is from the Nicholasville and Lexington areas. (Ohio State ended up pulling out of the game due to COVID-19 exposure.)

You had Republican Senate Minority Mitch McConnell, who usually doesn’t have much good to say about Democrats, praising Democratic President Joe Biden for cutting through red tape and approving Kentucky’s request for federal disaster assistance.

It’s good to see that when the chips are down, government can actually function fairly well with people on both sides of the political aisle working together for a common good. (If only we could get them to do that the rest of the year.)

It’s also great to see people putting aside their petty differences that we have day in and day out in, such as arguing over who will win a basketball game, in order to just help their fellow man.

The Christmas season is another good example of a time of year when we tend to forget about what divides us, and instead try to help out those less fortunate.

People pitch in money and their time to donate to help children have a better Christmas whether it was a recent community giveaway at the Patterson Creek Volunteer Fire Department, or the Corbin and Williamsburg police department Shop with a Cop events last Wednesday and Thursday, or the Empty Stocking Fund giveaway Saturday to name just a handful of these events.

Last month, several people pitched in for a Thanksgiving food giveaway that the Whitley County Detention Center coordinated to help make sure families had a good holiday meal. The Corbin Lion’s Club does something similar every Christmas.

When someone has lost their home due to a tornado, nobody is asking whether they are Republicans or Democrats or any of the other labels we use to divide ourselves before offering to help. More fortunate people just want to give to help try and relieve some of their suffering.

The point is disasters and holidays like Thanksgiving and Christmas have a tendency to help people think a little bit less about themselves, and a little bit more about helping others and those who are in need or less fortunate.

If we could just harvest the giving spirit around these events year round, then the world would be a much better place with less suffering.

Sadly, we can’t or maybe it’s just that we won’t.

From all of us here at the News Journal, Merry Christmas and Happy New Year.