Danna (Giving)

With Christmas on the way, I was curious what Buddha's teachings had to say about giving so I searched Access to Insight. He actually had a lot to say about giving and considered it one of the essential preliminary steps of practice. The merits of giving are beyond comprehension.

At the end of the Danna (Giving) Sutta, he explains:

"Just as it is not easy to take the measure of the great ocean as 'just this many buckets of water, just this many hundreds of buckets of water, just this many thousands of buckets of water, or just this many hundreds of thousands of buckets of water.' It is simply reckoned as a great mass of water, incalculable, immeasurable. In the same way, it is not easy to take the measure of the merit of a donation thus endowed with six factors as 'just this much a bonanza of merit, a bonanza of what is skillful — a nutriment of bliss, heavenly, resulting in bliss, leading to heaven — that leads to what is desirable, pleasing, charming, beneficial, pleasant.' It is simply reckoned as a great mass of merit, incalculable, immeasurable."

It's a short sutta that can easily be read in it's entirety here:
Dana Sutta: Giving" (AN 6.37), 

translated from the Pali by Thanissaro Bhikkhu.