Growing up, we were fairly poor, although we never took government assistance, we were blessed with people donating things to us. My dad was a minister, now retired, with 5 children. Looking back, even though we were lower class, my parents tried to give us a middle class lifestyle and instill middle class values. We saw dad go to work, on Sunday to preach and during the weeks doing visitation. Once all of us were in school mom took a part time job at the local senior citizen center.
Even though we received charity often, we were also taught to be charitable as we could. For several years, we went to the local Salvation Army and wrapped presents, and boxed up Christmas food packages.
On a slightly different tangent, but related to some of the other comments. One thanksgiving when me and my younger sister were in college and the older 3 children couldn't make it to town for the holidays, we decided to help serve at a local restaurant who opened his restaurant for a free Thanksgiving to anyone in the community who wanted to come. In addition to the poor in the community you'd expect to come to a free meal, there were quite a few people who obviously had money but didn't have anybody to share Thanksgiving. The owner of the restaurant heard some people questioning why they were serving people who didn't need a free meal. He told them I didn't advertise "free Thanksgiving meal if you need food", I advertised "free Thanksgiving meal." They may not of needed the food, but the needed someone to celebrate the holiday with and their more than welcome around our table.
Another story from when I was much younger. During the blizzard of 1977 in Ohio, we were snowed in for a couple of weeks although the U.S. highway in front of the house was cleared. One of the member of the church with a 4 wheel drive truck and picked up dad to go into the grocery store. With the snow, there was a shortage of food especially bread and milk, and the store was limiting their purchases. Dad comes up to the checkout with 10+ gallons of milk and 10+ loves of bread. The cashier immediately says "you know with the shortages we're limiting people to 1 of each". Dad said, yes I know, and proceeds to hand her a list of 9 other families that were snowed in worse than we were several with small children that they were also buying for. Initial reaction, was your being greedy in this disaster when they were really being charitable. After getting back home with the groceries another member of the church with a snowmobile helped them deliver the groceries. In fact, we had electricity, so instead of buying us a baked loaf of bread, the bought a frozen loaf of bread dough for us so those without electricity could buy the baked bread. So, as other have said, what on the surface may have look greedy in reality wasn't.