We’re nearing the beginning of December, and the “official” countdown to Christmas.
In our house, we buy those cheap chocolate advent calendars for November and December to make the fun last. Funny story: my daughter came to me and fessed up that she ate all of the chocolates in her calendar already. Bummer.
I always have grand intentions of planning out a complex advent calendar with fun Christmasy activities for us to do daily, but I find it a bit overwhelming. Something that has worked for me in the past was to create a Christmas activity basket, where I prepped various crafts and activities for us to pull out whenever the mood struck.
Lately I’ve seen a few ideas floating around about doing a Random Acts of Kindness (RAK) advent calendar. The idea is simply that each day you have a specified RAK to carry out and bring joy to the people around you.
Some ideas that you could include on your countdown are: tape change to a vending machine; bring a donation to the food bank; find a dirty vehicle and leave a gift certificate for a care wash; leave a twonie with a note in a dollar store; go to a grocery store and return all the cars to a cart corral; pay for the order of the vehicle behind you in the drive thru; bring homemade cookies to the post office when mailing your Christmas cards; send someone a paper hug; text someone an encouraging word or three things you value about them; phone a far-off relative and sing a carol or two over the phone; shovel your neighbour’s sidewalks; let someone go ahead of you in a lineup; bring a handmade bookmark to the librarian; and leave a kind note for the house with your favourite Christmas decorations.
There are so many fantastic ideas for a random act of kindness and it will surely leave a smile on someone’s face and likely lead to a domino effect as they pass on the goodwill towards others.
