Two great stories about the gift of giving caught my eye recently.

The first came last night on the CBS Evening News — a broadcast with which I have some passing familiarity, cough, cough — and was about a bank in North Dakota that gave its employees a thousand dollar bonus for Christmas. But with a catch. They had to give it away.

“There were three rules. You can’t give it to your family. You can’t give it to a co-worker. And you have to document your good deed. Other than that, the sky’s the limit,” chief operating officer Michael Solberg said.

The tapes are just now starting to roll in, and they run the gamut: from the woman who paid for an abandoned kitten to get a life-saving surgery to the guy who gave the money to a friend whose car got stolen.

One worker bought DVDs and DVD players for the local cancer ward while another turned her check over to a young, struggling, brand-new widow.

And what did the workers get out of it?

“Just a real good feeling of giving,” one said.

Another: “You actually truly see the benefit better by doing it yourself.”

And another: “It actually gets to the people that we know in the community that need it.”

Employees say this gift of giving is truly the best bonus they’ve ever gotten. And they’re already counting the days ’til next Christmas.

It’s a great tale, told as only the inimitable Steve Hartman can tell it. Check the link for more, and the accompanying video.

The second tale comes from the Catholic Universe Bulletin, in Cleveland:

Jack Martanovic, a sophomore at St. Ignatius High School, had no idea the mammoth men’s shelter run by Lutheran Metropolitan Ministries near downtown even existed prior to Gesu Parish’s second annual Service Day on December 1.

Yet, there he stood on a Saturday afternoon scrubbing a restroom door at 2100 Lakeside, as the shelter has come to be known on the street. A movie or a game of football with friends could have been more appealing, but he, like more than 770 other volunteers, including his father and uncle, chose to give time and energy to others that day.

“When you get out here, you’re doing good,” Martanovic said. “I would definitely come back in the future.”

Before returning to the University Heights parish for Mass, the volunteers spread across 48 different sites in Greater Cleveland, including the Cleveland Food Bank, Cleveland Clinic Children’s Hospital and the Jennings Center for Older Adults in Garfield Heights for a day of service. Meg Wilson, Gesu’s outreach coordinator, wasn’t simply searching for a sufficient compliment when she described the churchgoers as active.

“I think a lot of people realize they’re fortunate and they welcome a chance to get out in the community,” Wilson said. “Some people, after they’ve volunteered, have contributed money and time to the same places they went last year.”

Jesuit Father Lorn Snow, the mastermind behind Service Day, said it was created to promote the Jesuit identity of the church.

“A Jesuit church should be all about reaching out beyond our church,” Father Snow said. “Being available is really what it means to be a Jesuit parish.”

While Jack Martanovic and others tended to the restroom, Bennett Presser, a sophomore at St. Ignatius, and his aunt, Jody Prosser, readied juice cups to accompany the spaghetti lunches about 225 men consumed. Meanwhile, Gary Wright and his son, Evan of University Heights, placed salads on trays to go with the pasta, garlic bread and apple crisp cobbler.

Gary and Jack’s father, Joe Martanovic, agreed that the seemingly simple act of preparing lunch at a men’s shelter would have an lasting effect on their children’s development as young men.

“I think they can learn to respect others, especially people that are challenged by some things that they most likely will never be challenged with,” Gary Wright said. “Everybody’s story is different … (volunteering) is one of the best things a young man could do.”

You can read more at the Catholic Universe Bulletin link above. And you can visit the Gesu parish website at this link.