Take away aid for U.S. poor and you have Haiti

I love that quiet lull that occurs after every gift has been opened and every stomach stuffed on Christmas Day.

The children play, often quite boisterously, in the family room. The adults talk cheerfully in the kitchen as the dishes are cleaned and put away.

I like to gather up the feather-light garbage bags of Christmas wrap and carry them outside, enjoying a moment of solitude and silence in the December cold. Eventually someone will have to figure out how to get all of it into the garbage can.

It occurred to me this year that my large, extended family spent more on fancy wrapping paper, ribbons and tags than a lot of families in Haiti are able to spend in a year on housing.

The holidays seem to highlight the contrast between the very best and worst in human nature. We go out of our way to give gifts great and small to the people in our lives but think nothing of fighting with strangers over a place in line at the discount store entrance. We donate time and money to charitable organizations but jockey with deadly earnestness for a parking spot by the door at the mall so we won't have to carry our bounty too far after an afternoon of conspicuous consumption.

Even the poorest American takes certain things for granted. We are, after all, a country that provides at least a fighting chance to our citizens.

Things are very different in the most poverty-stricken parts of Haiti — which means in most of Haiti. I visited the island country briefly last summer with a group of doctors and nurses and other volunteers who go a couple of times a year to teach rehabilitation skills and provide basic medical care.

In a lot of cases, because of limited facilities, sanitation, medical supplies and even electricity, it's the kind of medicine you might expect your child to receive in a school nurse's well-equipped office. There's just so much that can be done. But for many of the Haitians being treated, it's cutting-edge care, better than they'd ever otherwise get.

There's no sense of entitlement there. And I didn't understand what that meant until I saw it with my own eyes.