Christmas is one of my favourite times of the year. I cherish time with family and friends, enjoy a bounty of good food and see the holidays through the eyes of my children, who are really looking forward to Christmas, too. They love the yearly rituals and traditions we’ve done since they were born – decorating the house, picking out a Christmas tree, writing letters to Santa and baking cookies with their cousins.
One thing that is never far from our minds, especially at this time of year, is how much we have to be grateful for. We are blessed with an abundance of… well, everything. There will be no shortage of toys under the tree, nor will there be any hungry tummies this holiday.
But many families aren’t so lucky.
So, I’m helping my kids do something about it. We’ve come up with a plan this year to give back over the holidays by donating a lot of the toys we received for review to charity, and also to do a few other simple things that can really make a difference, like participating in GivingTuesday, the new movement that empowers everyone to give as much – or as little – as they can. (Because every bit counts!)
Today, we visited CanadaHelps.org, one of the founding members of GivingTuesday, to make a donation to SickKids Hospital. Here is the message my kids composed to go along with our gift:
To all the wonderful doctors and nurses at SickKids,
Thank you for helping our cousin get better.
Happy Holidays!
It was amazing to see the joy on their faces, knowing they had done something great for someone else.
I want to keep the act-of-kindness momentum going, so tomorrow they’re going to help me tweet for a good cause, too!
A good friend told me that CIBC is getting involved in GivingTuesday this year and for every RT of #givingtuesdayca, CIBC will donate $1 to #CIBCMiracleDay, up to $10,000. Awesome, right? I’ll be tweeting, so please RT if you can. 🙂
These are just a few small things we can do to make life better for others. All random acts of kindness matter, so donate your coffee money tomorrow for a good cause.
Let your kids see you do it; let them help you do it.
Learning the invaluable lesson that giving back is not only good, but it feels good, too, is the best gift our children could ever receive.
Disclosure: I was not compensated in any way for this post. 🙂
Love the comment that your kids wrote. Sick kids is such a great organization. We donate to them monthly but I love that there's a special day every year to donate too. It's a good reminder 1. to donate to a good cause and 2. of how fortunate we are. thanks for sharing & I will def. be re-tweeting!