Anyone who’s ever been in elementary school remembers the annual Christmas gift exchange.

Each student would draw another student’s name.

The student would then be instructed to spend only a paltry amount on a gift for that classmate.

The result was usually a room full of kids who were left looking at their gifts and wondering out loud, “What’s this?”

That’s what happens when you send an 11-year-old boy out to buy a gift for a girl he barely knows.

She ends up with a little piece of toy artillery that the boy considered absolutely fantastic.

All in all, these exchanges were meant to be a concession to kids who were thinking about nothing but the holidays anyway, though almost everyone knew going into it that it was just a chance to avoid schoolwork for a little while.

The people at Emmaus Lutheran School on Covington Road noticed that trend. The students would be given a limit on what they would spend, but some parents would go way over the limit and buy a student something really nice, said Principal Keith Martin. Everyone else would be kind of jealous. It spread as much resentment as cheer.

So this year, the school decided to forgo the Christmas exchange and do something different.

The school has what it calls a character education initiative, and each month students are taught a different character trait. December’s trait was caring.

One parent who volunteers at Charis House, a shelter for homeless women and children, spoke to the faculty and suggested a worthwhile school project.

The community has plenty of different drives to benefit the needy. There are food drives and coat drives and backpack drives and school supply drives. But no one ever seemed to get down to earth and look at people’s feet.

Many homeless families have only threadbare socks or no socks at all, but no one thinks of giving people socks.

“Where we are, most of the people are blessed,” said Martin. “They don’t need another gift. They’re well supported.”

So the 150 students at Emmaus decided the right thing to do was bag the gift exchange and, “help someone who really needs help,” Martin said.

And so a sock drive filled that need.

By last week, the school had accumulated 356 pairs of socks, with more to come.

“I can’t stop it,” said Martin, who said he has another stack of socks in his office that recently arrived.

Let’s be honest, though. Socks aren’t that big a thrill for a kid who is homeless, so the different grades at the school have launched other drives, accumulating movies, books and toys for kids who are in a shelter right now.

Kids do need toys, you know.

They’ll be dropped off in time for Christmas.