Holiday Giving

* Re “Why Should This Be the Season?” Dec. 29.

Surely Noreen Castellani and her husband provide noteworthy charitable services on a permanent basis, at substantial effort and expense on their own part. Such charity for the benefit of the poor is most highly commendable. Indeed, it is a dedication of their lives to the poor; generous, heroic, worthy of our high esteem.

Unfortunately, she is saddened, noting the charity of others seems to be practiced only in the holiday season. But for many the holiday effort is only a special--additional, over and above, ongoing--dedication to charitable needs.

Castellani should not attribute her sadness to the imagined faults of others but to her own passing of judgment--or misjudgment--on them.

RICHARD C. FARRELL

North Hills