Story highlights Tiziana Dearing: Donating to charities that we connect to over holidays has been a tradition

To help bridge political division in country, we have to give out of our comfort zone, she says

Tiziana Dearing is a professor of social work at Boston College and the former president of Catholic Charities for the Archdiocese of Boston. The opinions expressed in this commentary are solely those of the author.

(CNN) The binge just begins at Thanksgiving. First, it's food. Then, it's shopping. It continues straight through Christmas, almost regardless of your religion, and explodes in a finale of champagne, more food and staying up late on New Year's Eve. Whew. It's been one hell of a month and a half.

Fortunately, the holiday season is also the giving season. In 2015, nearly 1 million people ran Turkey Trots on Thanksgiving morning -- mostly for charity . Right after Black Friday and Cyber Monday comes Giving Tuesday , a day of cyber-giving that nets well over $100 million globally each year. Then there are the clothing and gift drives at schools, churches and local businesses. Salvation Army bell ringers turn out in force with their 25,000 red kettles, and even the tax code encourages us to get our donations in before the year's end.

Tiziana Dearing

I'm not a huge fan of the concept of "charity" despite its profound tradition. Charity allows giving at a distance that can help things but doesn't really fix things. I ran a $40 million anti-poverty agency for several years. We touched nearly 150,000 people annually. Charity helped tremendously, but gifts from detached donors who want to ease the suffering of others don't change the systems that create such disparities in the first place.

I prefer the concept of "solidarity." While most famously associated with the Polish workers' movement and the fall of communism, solidarity is a much broader, much older concept that recognizes human interdependence. Solidarity calls us to be in "right relationship" with each other, recognizing that each other's fortunes affect our own, and we are implicated in the injustices that affect another's pain, suffering or basic human dignity. It's a heavy term but also a liberating one when practiced in love.

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This year the season of giving can also double as a season of healing if we do more than show charity. Through our giving, we can re-establish community. We can show solidarity with people who are different from us at a time when we need desperately to do just that.

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