Giving Money to Stupid People

A local situation, I'm witholding the details because I'm curious about the ideas behind the situation, not the exact situation itself.

A family has a fire, which is traumatic, but no one was hurt or killed - they did lose all their possessions in the fire, though. So, you say, lucky break; all they lost was stuff...Insurance will replace that, right? Well...they didn't have content insurance. And it turns out that the cause of the fire were their 12 and 13 year old kids that were smoking and were too stupid to keep track of where they were leaving their lit cigarettes.

So, an expensive lesson for the family and the normal appeals for donations go out. I am approached to give money to this family and I say no. It's my choice to say no. I'm a family man who has a family to support. My charitable donations have been limited to at the most three causes that I actually believe in.

Said canvasser calls me cruel and heartless, and hopes that I'm never in the situation this family is in - then I'd understand.

Now, let me get this straight: because I don't give my hard-earned cash to help this family replace their things I am somehow a bastard. Because I'm giving my money to charities that actually save lives, rather than people who are too dumb to get content insurance, I'm still judged as unfeeling if I don't reach into my pocket to give it away to anyone that asks...

Charity begins at home, they'll say. But one of the defining characteristics of charity is that it proceeds at the option of the giver. I find it presumptuous of canvassers to judge me based on my rejection of their oh-so-subtle heartstring manipulations:

"Their Christmas is ruined!" - well my relatives were able to ruin many of my Christmases. I lived. Why should I have to be shamed into some Santa role to people I don't even know or care about?

I don't know. Maybe I'm starting to understand Ebenezer Scrooge better - "Humbug, a poor excuse for picking a mans pocket every 25th of December."