When our son was two, we got a really cute wooden advent house to use at Christmastime. It’s been a joy these last few years to fill it with little toys, snacks, and notes with fun activities for us to do together written on them. While that has quickly become a family tradition we all look forward to, I started questioning myself last December and wondering if we couldn’t do something a bit different, perhaps a bit more meaningful.
Once I started looking around for different ways we might use our Advent house for future Christmases, I quickly realized there was quite a common trend for families to incorporate this sort of random acts of kindness theme into their Advent traditions. I loved this idea immediately. What better way to teach our kids the joy of giving than by coming up with daily activities to carry out together during the month of December?
When we break out the beloved Advent house on December 1, we’ll talk about what it means to do nice things for others, during the holiday season and always, and how the joy those actions bring can turn around and make us feel good too. Each day, our son will open a little numbered door to find a handwritten note with our task for the day. In no particular order, here are the activities I’d like for us to do this year:
- Bake muffins and take them to Grandpa’s office
- Pick up trash in the neighborhood or at the park
- Donate pet food to the Kansas Humane Society
- Make a thank-you note for your kindergarten teacher and include a gift card to a local coffee shop
- Send out a video to brighten someone’s day who lives faraway
- Pass down outgrown clothing to a local organization who supports families in need (check out this helpful resource)
- Bake cookies and take to the staff at our local UPS Store (this is where we get our mail, otherwise consider leaving some for a neighborhood mail carrier or delivery driver)
- Take a bag of great-grandmother’s favorite groceries over to her house
- Send a letter to a friend or family member
- Make pinecone bird feeders for neighbor gifts (we’ll use sunflower seed butter to make sure they’re allergen friendly for anyone who might come into contact with them)
- Take a few handmade Christmas wreath crafts to nursing home residents (we’ll check first with the particular place we’re thinking of going to ensure they’ll allow this)
- Pick out a new houseplant for Grandma and take it to her house
- Prepare a meal for a friend
- Do a chore for someone in the family (or help with it)
- Let someone go ahead of us in line at the grocery store
- Donate an outgrown toy to a local organization who supports families in need
- Rake leaves or shovel snow for a neighbor
- Call someone you haven’t seen in a while and tell them why you miss them
- Invite a friend over for some outdoor, socially distanced hot chocolate
- Write a nice message on the sidewalk with chalk
- Donate canned goods to the Kansas Food Bank
- Send a note to the house that has the Christmas lights you love the most and thank them
- Give one of your classmates a compliment
- Send a thank-you card to healthcare workers at a local hospital
With all that 2020 has been, it seems like the absolute perfect time to work together as a family to put a little more joy and kindness out there into the universe. I’m really looking forward to getting started!