Religious or not, the “holidays season” starting at the end of November and ending mid-January is one of the most apt time for random or planned acts of kindness. The religious celebrations (Thanksgiving, Christmas, Winter Solstice, Hanukkah, Epiphany/Three Kings Day, etc.) are all centered around the light overcoming the darkness, divine love, and/or gratefulness. So it’s rather fitting for people to see what can be done to help ease the burden of others.
Multicultural Kid Blogs’ members have gathered ideas about acts of kindness families can do around the holiday season, and these ideas can help to inspire other families to serve during the holidays.
- Need ideas of how you can do random acts of kindness with your children? Leanna from All Done Monkey has a great series of posts about this topic! Raising her children in the Baha’i faith, she does her best to teach them love, kindness, charity, and generosity. With the help of fellow bloggers, she started this series to show how one family can serve others in meaningful ways.
- Frances writes at Discovering the World Through My Son’s Eyes, and like Leanna, has set some goals for her family to reach out to others, especially during Christmas season. Her post Random Christmas Acts of Kindness as well as her Giving Tuesday post can help you pick relief activities to do during your holidays. Frances wrote in a heartfelt post how her son beautifully behaved when he encountered a homeless couple, and how we can help our children with their kind deeds.
- For lists of trusted non-governmental organizations (NGO) you can help fund, The Global Mom has some nice ideas. Her post was written for Giving Tuesday but can be useful for any moment of the year.
- One family explains how they will take part in a Kindness campaign in their neighborhood during the whole month of December. I would love for my town to do such a wonderful challenge! Thanks to Femme Au Foyer for letting us know that communities are working for kindness, service, and love to spread through their citizens.
- The Educator Spin On It explained how we can be parents that give our children a sense of gratefulness, and she gives service ideas that are focused on giving back to seniors.
- In one of her posts, the author of Family in Spain tells of her involvement in a food bank. It’s an interesting and educative read for your children and helps them to understand how a food bank works.
- The blog Pennies of Time is dedicated to compassionate deeds and is a must-read if you want to improve the kindness in your home. For the holidays season, three posts stand out: Serving During the Holidays: Community Focus, Family Fun Activities to Give to Others, and Acts of Kindness: Care Kit for the Homeless.
For Muslim families, Christmas is not a “holy”-day. But that doesn’t mean Muslim people don’t feel the spirit of charity and generosity this time of year. In the news last week, I read that a restaurant managed by Turkish citizens in London will cater for free to homeless and elderly people on the Christmas day. Charity is one of the Islam pillars: Zakat, the alms-giving. Muslims tend to teach their children as early as possible about charity. A Crafty Arab offers 4 ways of making a Zakat box with the kids (recycled, glass jar, wood box, shadowbox). The boxes can be used by children from other faiths as well as saving boxes, and then they can give these savings to their charity or NGO of choice once a year.
I will finish this round-up post with my own contribution. As a Christian family, Christmas season is a very big event. My husband and I teach our children to be more aware of their surroundings and all the good things they can do. Of course, it’s not only for December! We want them to be charitable all year long. Each year we focus on a few BA (Bonnes Actions = Good Deeds) we can do together. This year, we are taking part in our church’s campaign called Light the World which is an Advent Calendar of acts of service. Each day we can do or learn about something good. Example include helping disabled people, learning about a particular illness to be more understanding, collecting food, offering time to help a neighbor, praying and fasting for someone sick, etc. We believe we should reach out to others and help those in need. After all, we are all human beings that may one day need a caring hand as well.
I wish you all a Happy Holiday season full of smiles, kindness and love!
May you find it in yourself to turn on the light nesting in your heart and brighten your days and the days of your loved ones and friends.
Latest posts by Eolia Disler (see all)
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- Acts of Kindness Families Can Do Around the Holiday Season - December 16, 2016
These are great ideas. I will be checking out these posts and try to put these ideas into practice with my children!
Great ideas!
Great!