By Adrian Pascua

By Adrian Pascua

The Marine Reserves’ Toys for Tots slogan states, “Help a child smile for the holidays;” just not with Jesus. Toys for Tots have distributed over 313 million toys to over 151 million needy children between 1947 and 2003. Last year, Toys for Tots distributed 18 million stuffed animals, games, toy trucks, as well as other gifts. This year though, they received a donation of 4,000 Jesus dolls that are a foot tall and quote the bible, priced at $20 a doll, but they almost had to turn them down.

Their reason was they couldn’t give a doll of Jesus to a Jewish or Muslim family. Of course, that’s understandable, but a toy is a toy. The donation came from a manufacturing company called One2believe, a company that specializes in Biblical figures. I don’t think Toys for Tots is wrong for turning down the dolls, but I don’t see it as right either. A toy meant for Christianity can also be used to teach another religion.

If anyone took offense to a child’s toy, I’d think Santa would cease to exist in a child’s imagination. Charity is charity, compassion is compassion; it does not always have to be the “my religion is right, yours is wrong” when what we need is to be tolerant of one another. I understand standing up for your beliefs, I understand that not everybody is a Christian, but what’s the cost of taking away a child’s happiness.

Being politically correct these days is just absurd. It’s to the point where we actually have to screen the toys that we give out, when getting brand new toys to give away is hard enough to come by as it is. It was hard for Toys for Tots to accept those religious toys and I respect that, but I’m actually glad that they took up the One2believe’s offer on the Jesus dolls.

This world is so ridiculously concerned with being politically correct that it’s terrifying. To think that you could piss someone off with toys just boggles the mind. What we really need is to stop is this “you can’t” attitude.

You can’t say this because it’ll offend someone; you can’t do that because some will take the wrong way; you can’t give that toy to a child because their parents might not like it. If something like this was such a cause for concern, why should we doing do anything out of kindness at all? Well, if we all did that I’m pretty sure you would all hate life right now.

Just because the doll was meant for a religion, it doesn’t mean that toy can’t be used to bring someone else happiness. Who knows, that one religious toy that little boy or girl gets could be the only thing that they would be receiving on Christmas. It’s a nice thought even if it’s just a scenario .

Given that Toys for Tots almost didn’t take the dolls, I think in the end, it all turned out for the best.