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You can help a homeless person this Christmas season by giving them something that shows you personally care, or I suggest you can help by giving them something completely impersonal. Or you can just wish each of them a "Happy Holiday" -- that never hurts.

There are a lot of blog posts and Web pages devoted to preparing Christmas care packages for homeless people. Every page includes a list of items, wrapping in warm sentiments. After asking a handful of homeless, and formerly homeless individuals for their opinions, I see they mostly agree with the online lists:

• white socks


• underwear


• deodorant stick


• disposable razor


• Medium, or Large T-shirt


• Chocolate bar


• mini Flashlight with batteries


• disposable rain ponch


• Something called "Weed"


• Rolling papers (Zig Zag white)


• Disposable lighter


• Zipper-lock bag


• Gift card

I know of four homeless, or formerly homeless women, but was unable to get their input for this post. Several guys agreed everything should be in a small backpack. That's sensible. The papers, lighter, and chocolate bar could be in the zipper-lock bag -- any herb should probably be in it's own zipper-lock bag. Food choices should be made on the basis of non-perishability, and two plain facts: homeless people, by-and-large are not adventurous eaters, and a lot of homeless folk -- myself included -- have lousy teeth, and many have no teeth at all.

Skip all that and just give a gift card

I gave this some thought. Some things on this list -- socks, underwear, clothing -- come to homeless people routinely from social agencies, and by clothing drops in the back alleys. Soap is usually provided wherever homeless people can go get a shower. Giving the other stuff on the list is genuinely useful and saves homeless folk from having to buy or find it. Still, I would suggest if you're going to give a homeless person something of value; something they have trouble getting anywhere else, consider loading up a fast food restaurant gift card for them. There are some homeless people who won't use such a card, but they can barter it for something they do want.

I'd recommend McDonald's hands down, but Tim Horton's is okay too. It's not hardly about the food. It's about the right to get out of the rain and cold when a person needs to, and use a restroom.

The thing about McDonald's, aside from the fact there are lots of them, is they have a wonderful employee culture of benign indifference to their customers. Basically they don't care -- in a good way. Whether the restaurant has lots of customers or not, the staff is kept busy. If you are a legitimate customer they will leave you alone. They don't do personal service. They won't be coming over to your table to see if you want something.

A homeless person can thus "fly-under-the-radar" and extract a lot of value from a visit to McDonald's that they can't get at a little "mom and pop" restaurant. I'm talking about sitting over a small, one dollar "seniors" coffee until you warm up, and then using the washroom to shave and clean up a bit. Currently McDonald's offers free newspapers, one free coffee refill, free Wi-Fi, and sometimes they have customer-accessible electrical plug-ins. Oh, and on almost all legal holidays, when all government services are closed, McDonald's is open to one-and-all for business.

I'm writing this post at a Waves coffee house, but I spend too much time at McDonalds. I surf the Web there, charge my laptop and rechargeable batteries there, and I eat there because I can do those things. And sometimes I'll have a coffee and muffin (and a free refill) there just to avoid foul weather a bit longer.

So if you're in the giving mood I'd recommend the gift card, including the receipt showing how much is loaded on the card. You could wrap the receipt around the card and put it in a pair of socks if you'd like.