Giving Trees During a Time of Pandemic

Dear Monsignor/Father,

Since many parishes want to support Giving Trees during the Advent Season, special care must be taken during this pandemic to avoid the transmission of the conoravirus. We don’t want a worthy endeavor to be the cause of an outbreak of COVID in your parish or school.

As you know, we already have eliminated use of shared paper items in churches to avoid spreading the virus. Tags hanging on a tree, which people will handle to review, become germ receptacles which cannot be sanitized. The tree itself becomes a place where people will congregate to find a tag, which denies social distancing.

Please seriously consider eliminating the physical trees and establishing alternatives (and getting a parish volunteer to set it up!)

1. Create “virtual” giving trees with a link from your website or sent in a Flocknote to a free service like “signupgenius.com.” You may be using something like this for people to reserve a place at Mass in busier parishes.  That gives you a platform to list items which would no longer be available once someone claimed them. Unwrapped gifts could still be dropped off during a specific period  - just move the gifts using disposable gloves and leave in a locked area for 72 hours to avoid potential contamination.

2. Parishioners can buy the gift online and have it delivered directly to the agency (or the parish). Just be clear with instructions on how to identify the gift with the tag ID in the “memo” area.

3. If you make a wish list at Amazon.com, share the link to that list with parishioners and it will manage items once they are claimed by the buyer – and shipped directly to either the parish or the agency you are supporting.

4. Encourage gift cards be bought and given to the social service agency of your choice.

5. Simply set up a donation page on your eCatholic or other website and accept donations for that agency to get the gifts themselves.

We don’t need to let the virus spoil the holidays for families in need while trying to avoid putting parishioners at unnecessary risk.

Thank you.

Ray Delisle
[email protected]