Bas Kosters ‘The Gift of Giving’
It’s the most wonderful time of the year, isn’t it? Today is Christmas Eve, and probably a lot of you will be pampered this year by Santa with lots of nice presents. In Holland there is a big tradition with the ‘Christmas hamper’ which you get at work as a gift from your boss. Although people are never really satisfied with the content of their hamper, it is still a nice gesture.
Unfortunately, there are also a lot of people who will not get any presents this year, or don’t even have money for a nice Christmas dinner. Luckily this does not go unnoticed. A recent trend in Amsterdam Facebook groups is to create your own ‘Christmas Hamper’ and gift it to someone less fortunate. When I saw this I was happily surprised. Of course we can give to the numerous good causes that are out there, and it is very important that this happens, but to reach out to people in your own community is also important. To realise what is going on in your own surroundings and to give these actions visibility might be a good thing that comes out of the globalisation and digitalisation of our community. In that way our big world becomes small, meaningful and personal again.
Now for my gift, I will give the original artwork of this column to the one that can give a good reason to gift this illustration to someone who can really use some creativity and love in these dark days. So if you know anyone that you think really deserves this artwork, do the following: Go to the Bas Kosters Studio Facebook page, like the page, find the post of this column, and write underneath your story about who in your eyes deserves this original artwork and why. We will try to pick the best story and send out the drawing.
Happy Holidays!
