Bare necessities top holiday wish lists

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By Andrea Billups

Forget buying a ton of gifts. A week before Thanksgiving, the holidays are shaping up as a season of no frills.

And for some, the joy of family time and gift-giving has been replaced this year by a quest for basic necessities as more jobs are lost and unemployment benefits start to expire.

Michigan, with one of the highest unemployment rates in the nation at 14.8 percent in September, has a food crisis going into the holiday season.

"We have people coming to the food bank who said they were donating to us last year, but who are now out of work and in need themselves," said Alison Bono, who coordinates marketing for the Mid-Michigan Food Bank in Lansing.

She said that close to 1,000 people stand in line for produce handouts each week as they seek to supplement food stamps with fresh fruits and vegetables.

A little more than week before Thanksgiving, food bank supplies that used to be enough to last for six to eight weeks are now down to 10 days, said Ms. Bono, who calls the current seasonal needs extreme.

Some corporations and businesses, she said, are canceling holiday celebrations and donating the money used for parties to help charity groups.

They are running ads in the local newspapers' holiday supplement on Sunday with envelopes for donations as the situation turns ever more dire.

"We have, compared to last year, 15 percent more people looking for food. They are frantic, and many of them are people who have never had to apply for food stamps or seek assistance, but whose unemployment benefits have run out. ... We're calling this season a crisis of catastrophic proportions."

In certain areas across the nation, the Salvation Army, seriously hard-hit for money this year, has posted its traditional bell ringers and red kettles early in an effort to respond to what it sees as a historic need this holiday season.