Jesus seemed like an alright dude.

Say what you will about his present-day followers, but the J-ster definitely put his time in with the poor. I like to do my part every now and again, but when lepers get involved, you’ll see me uncomfortably check my watch and slowly remove my coat from the rack.

It ain’t me, babe. Leave that up to somebody with health insurance.

Plus, the guy handed out an awful lot for someone who didn’t have much to begin with. Maybe cutting planks for a living paid better back in the day, but all the carpenters I know are always looking to get into HVAC as soon as they can afford the classes. His career change to doing professional speaking for no money couldn’t have been a healthy financial decision for the 401(k), either. As a comedian, I talk in front of rooms full of people with the intention to get paid, and even then I don’t pull down that much scratch. From personal experience, I can tell you that making people laugh is a lot harder than getting people on board with being kind.

As far as I know, Jesus never made anybody laugh.

A bit of a serious cat, generally.

Comedy’s gotten me into a lot of charity work. Most figure that since comedians tend to get paid a pittance anyway, we can probably set aside one evening for no pay, and it isn’t exactly skin off our ass, as long as it’s for a good cause. The fact of the matter is that we’re such attention whores in the first place, we really don’t mind why someone wants to hear us say funny things into a microphone; we’re mostly just glad they thought to ask. Though on a particularly embarrassing occasion, I was caught having a cigarette around the back of the club where they were holding a cancer benefit … that I was hosting.

I don’t think it’s very sensitive of you to be smoking during a cancer benefit show.

Uh … well, when you think about it, as a heavy smoker, I’ve got a pretty vested interest in seeing it cured, wouldn’t you think? I mean, where’s that stem cell research, right? Build me a lung.

My husband has cancer.

Point made. In addition to not smoking any more cigarettes at this function, I’m going to, as a sign of my seriousness, not help myself to any more of the complimentary hors d’oeuvres. Would you say that’s fair?

Dead silence.

When I was a kid, our elementary school used to ship us over to the old folk’s home to sing Christmas carols.

Aside from eating a raw onion right before bed, that’s probably the most efficient way of creating nightmares I’ve ever seen. There’s nothing more haunting than the sound of a terrified children’s choir struggling through a rendition of “Silent Night,” the whole time desperately trying to ignore the fact that a 90-year-old man has suddenly been transported back to WWI.

Afterwards, there was always a brief meet and greet with our respective elderly person. Like pen pals in the developing world, we’d each been assigned an old person to make a Christmas card for. Something tells me Larry (my senior counterpart) was not very interested in my juvenile attempt to replace the love of his real and noticeably absent family, via construction paper and crayon, with a rather superficial token of holiday cheer. From the look on his face, he was actively fighting off the icy specter of death.

Everybody has a story, or has heard a story, about the homeless person they bought a sandwich for once, who a few years later pulls up in a Mercedes and thanks them. Hell, even I have a story like that. Her name was Tiki. She had a broken shoulder, she couldn’t make her jewelry anymore and she was homeless. I saw her the other day, she was just fine and remembered me from the café where I bought her dinner once. Cue touching music. I won’t bore you further.

Organized charity is great. There are some things that just can’t be accomplished without a large-scale effort, but the real nitty gritty of giving back is the stuff so infinitesimally small that it largely goes unnoticed in the grander scheme of our increasingly cynical world.

Helping a neighbor carry in their groceries.

Listening to someone who needs an ear.

Ordering too much food when you know your friend is starving and can only afford a cup of soup, then saying, “Hey man, you gotta help me eat this. I’m just gonna toss it, anyway.”

That stuff.

Maybe it comes around when you need it most, maybe it doesn’t. That’s the crapshoot. But it’s a stacked game, because you don’t really lose when you’re playing with karma. Everybody’s a broken shoulder away from losing their livelihood and a lot of folks are only a cheap construction paper card away from breaking a cycle of sadness.

That glimmer of humanity, so simple in form, yet so complex in implication, is our defining quality and it's what we’ve built communities around, and cured hatred with and been fueled by in our endeavors to create a better world, and that humanity is universal in all ages, places and cultures.

It’s why we are who we are, and we should take the time to appreciate the simple kindnesses more.

By the way, that story about my elementary school singing to the people in the old folk’s home?

That was 20 years ago.

All those people we sang for are dead now.

Merry Christmas.