Spreading Kindness

A few years ago, we adopted a tradition that both Brian and I enjoyed growing up in the 70's and 80's - a felt Christmas Tree Advent Calendar complete with felt ornaments to add each day as we count down to the holiday. Aside from the occasional arguments over who hangs which ornament where, (sharing is hard when you are a kid) we have all really enjoyed our little felt tree.

Felt Advent Calendar

Taryn and Colin are now at the age where they really love getting presents and like many children, that has become a big focus of the holiday for them. Despite the fact that we lead a relatively secular life, I found myself wanting to shift their focus off of the material aspects of Christmas and instead channel some of their boundless energy in the direction of doing nice things for others.

Random Acts of Kindness

In late November, a few friends in my Facebook feed were sharing the Coffee Cups and Crayons Random Acts of Kindness calendar. After a bit of discussion with Brian and the kids, we reviewed the calendar and searched Pinterest for additional ideas and decided on 24 small acts of kindness we could do each day to spread joy in our community. Megan from Coffee Cups and Crayons offers a printable calendar on  her blog, but we decided I would write the activities on paper and tape them to a dollar store calendar we have hanging in our kitchen. That way, we can move the activities around if needed. It isn't fancy, but it is a start and next year we can always change the system around.

Our Not-so-fancy Kindness Calendar

Activities

One of the things I always worry about when taking on a new tradition is how much time it will take to prepare and execute. When choosing activities to do, we tried to balance the preparation time and complexity so we had some very simple tasks to execute as well as some that require a bit more planning and work to execute. We also tried to spread the more time consuming items around the calendar to allow for ample time to prepare.

Some examples of the simple tasks include: telling a joke, leaving a note for a friend, calling a loved one and smiling and greeting everyone we meet.

A few that need more preparation and coordination include: scheduling time to socialize the cats with the local rescue group, leaving kindness stones along our favorite trail, place pine cone bird feeders at the park and bringing cookies to the fire station.

Leaving Popcorn at RedBox

I am really looking forward to the activities where we get to prepare something together as a family - like the kindness stones or cookies and then have a little adventure to execute our act of kindness.

Does your family have a tradition that helps spread holiday joy?

Spreading kindness, Kim