The holiday-appropriate heart-warming tale is told in this video I can’t embed here. Apparently a wealthy “Secret Santa” is giving $1 million to “deserving people in eastern Idaho,” and the East Idaho News is publicizing the plan with daily surprise visit to the lucky recipient. “Brenda in Blackfoot”is first up. From the News: “She is a single mom with eight adopted children who all have special needs. She works from 4:30 a.m. to approximately 1 p.m. every day to support her children… She has really struggled… In May, they experienced a small house fire, which caused a lot of damage to her home….Googling the repairs for instructions , [Brenda] did all of the repairs herself. Her family also had a flood in their home about six weeks ago….Brenda went through cancer treatment last year as well…”

In the video, we see the East Idaho News “elves” as they surprise Brenda with Secret Santa’s holiday generosity. It is classic holiday “Awwwww!” Still, I have a couple of questions:

1. Does this mean that not all wealthy people are evil, selfish racists?

2. How does a single woman with limited resources get approval to adopt eight children, never mind eight special needs children?

3. As you will see in the video, Brenda has at least two large dogs in addition to all those kids. Properly caring for dogs is expensive. Maybe they are working dogs, but for a mother who seems so short of resources, this seems like a luxury she cannot responsibly afford.

4. What does “deserving” mean?