Tidings of Comfort

The tidings have not all been glad in the San Fernando Valley this holiday season.

In Burbank, stunned child abuse investigators found a 12-year-old girl held in what they described as a slave setting, beaten so badly and fed so little it’s a wonder she survived.

In Northridge, family and friends mourned the death of a 77-year-old Holocaust survivor whose extraordinary life ended when her car was broadsided by a stolen vehicle, its driver racing from police.

In Van Nuys, parents recoiled at the news that a 16-year-old Birmingham High School student was allegedly gang-raped by fellow students after she passed out from drinking at a daytime “ditching” party.

In Granada Hills, a 17-year-old’s classmates watched in horror as the aspiring young filmmaker set up a video camera on the school parking lot and then recorded his suicide.

This season so celebrated with food and finery can be the most painful and lonely time of the year. Somewhere someone will wonder how to get through this first Christmas without a loved one. A teenager will withdraw from family and friends and no one will know what comfort to offer. A child will wake up longing not for presents under a tree but for something to eat.

Yet in the midst of these sad tidings spring acts of selflessness and compassion. For all the season’s commercial excess and extravagant trappings, it is also a time of astounding generosity.

In Chatsworth, students at Chaminade Middle School collected 2,200 videos for patients in children’s wards across the city.

In Tarzana, volunteers distributed boxes of kosher food to low-income and housebound Jewish seniors.

At Cal State Northridge, students donated hundreds of books for children in Valley Head Start programs.

And from throughout the Valley came an outpouring of support for the abused Burbank 12-year-old, who, along with her three siblings, is now in the custody of Child and Family Services. Businesses, Girl Scout troops and individuals brought toys and food to the Burbank Police Department (donations may be left at the front desk, 200 N. Third St., Burbank, in care of Det. John Calicchio); others sent checks to a newly established trust fund (Public Counsel Allan Children Trust, 601 S. Ardmore Ave., Los Angeles, CA 90005).

Through actions such as these, a long, silent night becomes a little holier.