This year, I wanted to get my kids involved in the spirit of Christmas, and not just by having them pick out gifts for cousins or telling the Christmas story every. Single. Night. So I looked for service opportunities in our area, things that the kids could do and maybe even see the people they were helping as they performed their service. (At 3 and 1, they’re still a little young for that, but I wanted to do what they could).
One place that I found great opportunities in our community was the local United Way website. in the volunteering section, you could even search for opportunities by age group—as young as 5. (Five is like three, right?)
I found one that I particularly liked—preparing stockings for underprivileged and homeless families in our area. We bought the stuff and Hayden helped me stuff the stockings. I made sure to take him with me when we dropped them off. We also took some other things they needed for homeless families being placed into housing.
Now, you know I’m not normally one to pass these along, but a few days ago, I got a press release in my email. They pretty much had me the subject line: “Five ways for parents to teach children the true spirit of the holidays.” Here are their suggestions:
1. As a family, select a charitable organization you’d like to support. Use online tools like Charity Navigator to find an organization that you trust. Give your children a budget and encourage them to decide how your family will donate to that organization this holiday.
2. Cherish the stories of your family. Have your children talk to their grandparents and write down the stories of their past. Create a book to share with the entire family or record it online through Story Corps.
3. Consider do-it-yourself gifts, like no-sew fleece blankets, that you can make with your children. Donate those blankets to a local homeless shelter. Find other homemade gift ideas at About.com’s Family Crafts page.
4. Work with your children to create a coupon book for your neighbors that might need an extra hand this year. Coupons could include shoveling their sidewalk, watching their children, or providing a meal.
5. Bake cookies or sweets with your children and deliver them to your local nursing home or school-in-need. Get started with this list of holiday recipes.
(It feels like cheating if I don’t mention the company the press release was supposed to be touting: World Vision’s Gift Catalog, which lets you make a gift purchase—in the name of a friend/family member/whoever—ranging from clothing, shelter and food to education for families in the US and abroad.)
Finally, if you’re looking to make an impact, one non-profit I can recommend is SainTerre. I know it’s not glamorous to discuss, basic sanitation (yeah, potties) is something 2.6 million people live without—not even pit latrines. SainTerre is working to provide the people of West Africa with environmentally-friendly composting toilets, through its non-profit (okay, the business structure is a lot more complicated than that, but you can just stick to that side of it). My cousin was one of the founders, and you can contact him, Ammon Franklin, for information on how to donate.
How have you gotten you children into the spirit of giving this Christmas season?
This is one of those words that we use all the time, but I doubt many of us think about what it means. When I catch myself using it—in two phrases in particular—I realize what I’ve said and how empty and unkind it suddenly sounds.
