For families that don’t have much money, nothing says Christmas like layaway.

The department store installment plan that allows customers to pick out gifts and pay for them over the course of several months has been a staple of American life since the Great Depression.

While the concept of “buying on time” has taken on a new meaning in recent years with the proliferation of credit cards, layaway has long been the only extended payment option available to low-income families that can’t obtain credit.

Christmas, more than any other holiday, is when it really comes in handy.

For many children, layaway has meant the difference between waking up on Christmas morning to a shiny new bicycle or the disappointment of learning that Santa, for some reason or another, flew right over their house without stopping.

It is heartwarming to know that there are wealthy people like media mogul Tyler Perry in the world who still understand that.

Perry recently paid off the layaway accounts at Walmart for about 1,500 strangers in the Atlanta area. That amounted to about $434,000.

In a video released on Instagram, Perry acknowledged the good deed, after first trying to remain anonymous.

“If you have a layaway ... and it was in there as of 9:30 this morning ... I have paid for all of your layaways for Christmas. So Merry Christmas,” he said.

A few days later, Kid Rock followed Perry’s lead and spent $81,000 to pay off 350 layaways at his local Walmart in Nashville, Tenn.

Layaway can be a great thing if you’re able to set aside money and pay on it a little bit at a time, but many people tend to wait until the final day to try to come up with the entire balance.

The problem with layaway, though, is that most people who don’t have the money to pay for things upfront won’t have it four months later. They could end up losing not only the items they had put aside but also must often pay a cancellation fee and forfeit the service fee, if one was required.

Walmart, for example, allowed people to open their Christmas layaway plans on Aug. 31. The final payment had to be made and the items picked up by Monday. The mere fact that there were so many outstanding layaway balances as of Dec. 6, when Perry paid them off, shows that a lot of people fit into the latter category.

“I know it’s hard times and a lot of people are struggling. I’m just really, really grateful to be able to be in a situation to do this. So God bless you. Go get your stuff,” Perry added in the video.

Other than their celebrity status, the two men seem to have nothing in common, on the surface, at least.

Perry, a successful director and actor whose film studio is in Atlanta, knows firsthand what it’s like to grow up poor. He has talked openly about his childhood in New Orleans in a family marked by poverty and physical abuse.

Kid Rock’s childhood, on the other hand, was the epitome of the upper middle class. The singer-songwriter grew up on a 6-acre estate in a small, rural town near Detroit, in a colonial house with an apple orchard in the backyard.

His father owned several car dealerships. Perry’s father was a carpenter who barely made ends meet.

Kid Rock is a staunch Republican and defender of Donald Trump. Perry threw his full support behind Hillary Clinton, and has recently said he’d rather have a president who wasn’t so divisive.

The point here is that the holidays give us all an opportunity to be our best. It’s a time when we should put our differences aside and concentrate on the things that we have in common as Americans.

But most of all, it’s a time to reach out to those who are less fortunate and let them know that they aren’t in their struggle alone.

Perry certainly isn’t the first person who has paid off people’s layaway during Christmas. Americans seem to have recognized for a long time that paying off layaways is one of the best ways to have a direct impact on someone’s life.

A secret Santa walked into a Walmart in Pennsylvania the week before and paid off every single layaway account. That came to $29,000. A few days later, a couple in a Clarksville, Tenn., spent $77,000 to pay off layaway accounts at the Walmart in their city.

The same thing has happened in Vermont, New York, Colorado and other states.

In those places, at least, there are some parents who are going to be less stressed out from worrying about how they’re going to provide for their children this holiday season.

More importantly, though, there will be a whole lot of kids who will get to keep on believing in Santa and feel the joy that the holiday season brings.

Dahleen Glanton is a Chicago Tribune columnist.