Random Acts of Kindness During the Holiday Season

So, you want to spread some random acts of kindness during the holiday season but, you don't know where to start..Here's some ideas to get you going........

• Shovel your neighbor's driveway
• clean off your neighbor's car after a snow storm
• volunteer to serve holiday meals at a local shelter or Salvation Army
•  make homemade Christmas cards for your friend's and family
• send a christmas card to a stranger (there's plenty of people requesting cards at www.wishuponahero.com
• invite friends and family over to watch Christmas movies
• donate to a toy drive
• donate your old coats to a coat drive

Ideas for random acts......

So, you want to perform a random act of kindness but, you're not sure what to do....Don't worry, I've got you covered..Check out these great sites full of simple ideas that may cost you nothing more than your time.
http://www.noogenesis.com/malama/kindness/Stories/ideas01.html
http://www.daretobeanangel.com/tasklist.php   
http://www.helpothers.org/ideas.php
http://raktrak.com/rak/ideas/

An Experiment in kindness....

It's Christmas time again and I've gotten the impression lately that a lot of people just aren't feeling it this year.I can't really blame anybody..The media begins pounding it into our heads as early as October that it's time to start shopping.....you have to give big gifts with all the bells and whistles....After awhile all we end up hearing is buy, buy, buy, and buy some more...It's depressing for most people the economy is falling and unemployment is up.  We can barely pay our bills yet alone shell out a lot of money for fancy gifts....It's stressful...Somewhere in all that stress we lose perspective of what Christmas is all about...We get depressed and some what selfish. It's tough, believe me I know.

Anyways, back to my train of thought, which I seemed to have detoured from....I was helping out a local charity collecting money for the needy this Christmas..The rules of the charity that I was helping are that we can't out right ask people for money but, hopefully our presence will encourage donations... So, the tactic I've come up with is greeting everyone that walks by..I tell them thank you if they donate and if they don't I still wish them a nice holiday season.  What I noticed is most people couldn't look me in the face or wouldn't even bother acknowledging that I'd even said anything to them....Upon further observation, I began to notice that most people weren't being kind or courteous to there fellow members of the human race..Nobody stopped to say hello, nobody  held a door for anyone, or did anything kind in general for anyone else. It was really sad to watch.

So, I've decided.......I want to encourage some random acts of kindness....How will I do this you might ask..Well, I've put a lot of thought and research into this and I think I've come up with a great idea. An idea for which I've created this blog.

I'm going to make up a few handmade ornaments. I will anonymously distribute these ornaments through out my town and a couple of neighboring towns. What I mean by distribute is I will leave the ornaments in various places for  people to find on their own. Along with the ornament I will also enclose a card informing the recipient that they received a random act of kindness. In return I would like them to do the following: perform a simple, random  act of kindness, visit this blog and let everyone know where they found the ornament and what random act of kindness they've performed, and tell us about any random acts of kindness they may have been witness too.

Now do I expect to bring about world piece and fill my town with people going about performing selfless acts for others.....No, I'm a realist.  I don't think either will happen but, it would be cool wouldn't it. I do, however, hope to put a smile on a stranger's face and possibliy encourage them to do the same.  As for the ornaments, they'll just serve as my little mark on the world and hopefully a reminder to their reciepents that it's okay to do something for a stanger.  If they did happen to do something for someone as a result of my ornament maybe it'll be suvonier to remind them of what they did for someone else.

What exactly is a random act of kindness.........

A random act of kindness is a selfless act performed by a person or persons wishing to either assist or cheer up an individual or in some cases an animal. There will generally be no reason other than to make people smile, or be happier. Either spontaneous or planned in advance, random acts of kindness are encouraged by various communities. An oft-cited example of a random act of kindness is, when paying the toll at a tollbooth  on a highway, to pay the toll for the vehicle behind you as well.(Wikipedia, the free Encyclopedia)