Crunchy-Con has a post up about a suburban family giving gifts to a family that lives in a trailer park. Read the full post here.

All 30 -- 30! -- of the beneficent visitors pile into the trailer to watch the scraggly urchins open their gifts. And the guy leaves satisfied that his children now know the True Meaning of Christmas.

The friend who related this story to me was nauseated by it, as was I. The charitable impulse is a noble thing, of course, but this suburban guy used it as an exercise in feelgood lifestyle tourism. That impoverished family and their children were not human beings to him; they were props in a moralistic experiment. I cringed trying to imagine how their dignity must have been insulted by having those comparatively well-off people clambering into their trailer to gawk at them opening gifts, and to feel good about themselves.

Dreher does proceed to constructively recommend a different course of action for the suburban family, which is much better than the, "Can you believe this guy?!" approach his post begins with.

Those verses about "not letting your left hand know what you're right hand is doing" come to mind, as well as the ones about "loving your neighbor," which in my mind includes protecting their dignity. So, Dreher (and my) question is, how does one do charitable acts while maintaining the dignity of the recipient? Anyone heard or experienced similar stories? Anyone disagree with Dreher's outrage?