Are you one of those who puts up lights on the outside of your house the Friday after Thanksgiving? The Christmas yard art all in place and lit? The tree is up by the end of Sunday and fully decorated by Sunday NFL game time? What are You Doing for Christmas this Year?
Are you one of those who purchases gifts all year long stuffing them in surreptitious places in your home away from prying eyes? You make next year’s list on the 26th of December looking immediately for deals for next year’s gift list?
Perhaps you are one of those who waits until Christmas Eve to put up your tree, or you need a fresh cut tree, or maybe a prelit tree straight from Amazon. Gifts bought just a day or two in advance.
Do you do Christmas stockings? Buy gifts for everybody and his brother? Cook a dinner rivaling Thanksgiving? Make sure you get to a Christmas musical program? Go skiing to Colorado? Argue about whose parent’s home you grace this year?
One of my favorite Christmas stories is of the Wisemen coming to visit the Christ child following the Christmas Star. When they were instructed by Herod the Great to come back to tell him where they found the baby boy, they were warned by angels to “Go home a different way.”
Would you consider Going Home a Different Way for Christmas this year? Instead of all the trappings and trimmings and traditions, what might you do as a family to bless someone who would gladly trade places with you this Christmas?
Here’s a starter list…feel free to add to it and share:
- If you have small children, make a birthday cake for Jesus and tell them the real Christmas story. Sing Happy Birthday to Jesus.
- Find a food bank which feeds hungry people and volunteer to help
- Find Meals on Wheels routes which don’t deliver on Christmas day and volunteer to deliver.
- Volunteer at a soup kitchen
- Adopt a needy family…provide gifts and food
- Participate in church Christmas programs (even volunteer to help)
- Make cookies or candies, bag them up, and go door to door to your neighbors singing Christmas carols
- Invite people who have no place else to go or family with whom to spend Christmas and invite them to share your family dinner.
- If your church has a prison ministry see if you can go with them on Christmas Day
- Is there a skilled nursing facility near you, go hug some people in Jesus’ name who seldom ever get hugs. Sing some carols with them.
- Rake leaves for an elderly family…bring firewood to homebound people…
- Buy meals for first responders who have to work on Christmas Day.
- Gather your family and read the Christmas story from Luke 2
- Your turn…
FOOD FOR THOUGHT
More suggestions: https://www.coffeecupsandcrayons.com/24-random-acts-christmas-kindness-kids/
