Volunteering helps cure the blues that come around the holidays. Yes, at feeding programs it’s important to cook the food, serve the food and help clean up, but it is vital to sit down at the table with those whose lives have brought them to this hard time and place and share yourself. Last year at a local shelter in Chicago’s south loop, I was sure that one of the men at the table didn’t see the rest of us. He was clearly enjoying himself and ate heartily, but he called us by different names, “Anna” and “Cousin Johnny.” He was seeing, or perhaps even imagining, other feasts on other days when he wasn’t wearing three coats and someone else’s shoes. For a while, he was full and warm and thankful and among family, however imaginary.

Simply being present as one human being sharing food with another puts the world in perspective. The crazy strife we live with day in and day out is still there, but you did something real. For a little while, you relieved someone’s loneliness and even grief. Their thanks for that are profound and then you realize the thanks are all on your side. You got to help somebody.

Another benefit to volunteering around the holidays is that you get out of the house yourself. Maybe Aunt Fanny and Great Aunt Helen are in your kitchen going three rounds again this year about whether to put whole cranberries in the cranberry sauce or mash and strain them. You can leave them to it and spend a couple of hours downtown at the shelter. When you come back, you’ll find that no matter how the cranberry sauce turned out, the kids won’t eat it because they’ve decided it’s weird. And you’ll smile and bring in the rolls and it won’t bother you so much. There’s so much real pain in the world, weird cranberry sauce is not the worst problem.

You give thanks.