As the holiday season begins, so too will the many stories and statistics that have become synonymous with this time of year. How many Americans shopped on Black Friday and what did they buy? How many people travelled on Thanksgiving? How many turkeys did Americans consume this season? Which one did the President pardon? In an era defined by rapid information sharing, numbers say a lot, even about our celebrations.

One number not often reported is how much a celebration like Thanksgiving costs. According to the American Farm Bureau Federation, the cost of Thanksgiving dinner in 2014 for ten people was $49.41. The price has remained about $49 since 2011. If costs hold steady, you can expect to spend just under $5.00 per person this year. This is an average; most people spend much more than $5.00.

Five dollars doesn’t sound like a lot until you consider that many people buy food with food stamps. The Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), as food stamps are formally known, is a government program that helps struggling families afford food. Although the economy has improved since the recession, many people still live day-to-day and still use SNAP.  Moreover, the number of people on SNAP benefits has gone up considerably, from an average of 26.3 million in 2007 to 46.5 million in 2014.

Chances are that you know someone on SNAP. Working people, two-income households and maybe most appalling -soldiers and their families receive SNAP benefits. What this means is that you can work very hard, serve your country and still not have enough money to put food in your refrigerator. The formula to calculate SNAP is complex, but generally, your income has to be very low.

How low? To put this into perspective, let’s consider a family of four where the father (Sam) earns a respectable $15.00 an hour and the mother (Jane) cares for their two children . They pay $800 for a two bedroom apartment plus utilities. If they applied for SNAP tomorrow, they would get $304 a month in benefits for food. In fact, the way the SNAP formula works, this is the maximum amount they can receive.

Still, $304 a month sounds like a nice addition to anyone’s total income, until you think about it.  Jane and Sam spend all of their SNAP and all the rest of their non-rent income only on food, with no money allotted for anything else including transportation.

Using every dollar they have to pay for rent and food, leaves them with $4.04 to spend per person per meal. Do you remember the last time you spent $4.00 per person…for anything?

This family is lucky. Sam makes 170% of the minimum wage. This hypothetical (which is based on a real client of our non-profit) assumes a very low rent and utilities of no more than $64 a month. It does not include the taxes taken out of Sam’s paycheck. It assumes that Sam works and is not disabled, that his job is stable, that there are no emergencies. Everything has to remain artificially cheap and all life events must go their way. Any setback means they have to make a choice between eating or not.

If Sam made just a little more, say $17.50 an hour, or if both parents worked minimum wage jobs while grandmother babysat, the family would be disqualified from SNAP altogether because they would have too much money and still very little.

Policymakers often state that they believe in caring for the poor, but the laws they have proposed, enacted, or failed to enact suggest the opposite. Congress’ bipolarity cannot be blamed; it’s simply that nobody is galvanized by benefit increases for the working poor. Some have recently been given to shaming the poor by regulating what they eat or highlighting especially egregious cases of fraud, waste, or abuse. While others have weakly defended against unfair claims, mostly politicians just ignore the problem entirely. No politician at the federal level has seriously attempted to garner support for a bill that increases the allotment of SNAP to a level that actually sustains a household’s need for food.

Both sides do not acknowledge just how inadequate this part of our safety net really is. We all acknowledge that with 45 million people in the U.S. receiving SNAP, the number of people who need public assistance benefits to eat is too high. What we give them through tax dollars is hardly enough. Congress has stated through many of its policies that America is willing to abandon some populations – the undocumented, people with severe mental health problems, and others.  But what about the United States Citizen and Army veteran who now works full time? What if he has a wife and kids to support?

There’s nothing wrong with big celebrations. Still, when you sit down to your Thanksgiving meal next week, remember the 45 million Americans who cannot afford a turkey with trimmings or anything close to it. Here is just one of many ideas for you and your family that can make things just a little easier for those who are spending six dollars or less per person this Thanksgiving because that’s all they can afford.

Even better, spend six dollars per person this year and give the difference in your budget to a charity. Try it as an experiment.

Maybe if enough of us do it, we may hear it reported as a new holiday statistic.