- Bake cookies for a nursing home’s afternoon snack.
- Visit places in the community you’ve never been.
- Donate toys to a children’s toy collection charity.
- Decorate a tree in the country for the birds.
- Volunteer with Meals on Wheels or another meal delivery service
- Put money in a Salvation Army kettle.
- Attend a holiday concert.
- Be pleasant while waiting in a check-out line.
- Take an elderly friend to lunch.
- Use recycled paper to wrap gifts.
- Organize a group of friends to go caroling.
- Send a holiday card to someone with whom you’ve had a disagreement.
- Buy consumable gifts such as fruit baskets or jams and jellies.
- Shop church bazaars for handmade gifts.
- Send a holiday arrangement to a shut-in.
- Invite a single person to join your family gatherings.
- Walk through the neighborhood to look at holiday lights up close.
- Invite friends over to watch classic Christmas movies.
- Plan a cookie-decorating event with a family member or friend.
- Take a basket of cookies or bread to the neighborhood police or fire station.
- Call a nursing home and get the names of five people who don’t often receive mail. Send each one a card.
- Take extra time off work while the children are out of school for the holidays.
- Offer to care for someone’s pet while the person or family is out of town.
- Serve as a chauffeur or errand-runner for someone who doesn’t have time to get to the library, grocery store, pharmacy, or post office.
- Return your grocery cart to the store along with another one.
- Adopt a needy family and provide food for a traditional holiday dinner and toys for children.
- Donate warm clothing and toiletries to charity.
- Organize a group to clean up trash at the park.
- Donate books on tape to a nursing home.
- Call a long-distance relative or friend and don’t worry about the money.
- Rake the leaves from the yard of an elderly neighbor.
- Don’t forget to shovel snow when it’s time.
- Volunteer to help a friend clean windows.
- Take a busy friend’s car for a wash and wax.
- Say please and thank you as many times as possible, please. Thanks.
- Take lots of pictures.
- Make a memory album for a brother or sister.
- Call a friend and announce you’re delivering a cooked entree for a midweek meal.
- Help someone who’s carrying an armful to their car.
- Volunteer to babysit for a mother while she shops.
- Rent a cabin at a state park and invite a few friends for a weekend getaway.
- Make coupons to give single moms for free babysitting.
- Instead of exchanging in the family, donate the money to a charity or a relief effort.
- Send cards to those who have lost loved ones this year.
- Share an easy, tried-and-true recipe with a busy friend.
- Make loaves of quick bread to give to the letter carrier, the newspaper delivery person, teachers at school and Sunday School, security guards where you work, and your hair stylist.
- Treat teen-aged daughters, your mother, wife, or friend to a manicure and pedicure.
- Pay for a cleaning service for a chronically ill friend.
- Buy a meal for a homeless person.
- Buy stamps for someone who likes to write letters.
- Subscribe to a magazine for a shut-in.
- Call a school and see whether there’s a child who needs new boots for winter.
- Open a savings account for a child instead of buying toys.
- Send accolades to the chef when you’ve enjoyed a special restaurant dinner.
- Give a homemade gift.
- Make holiday ornaments yourself and to give to a friend.
- Make new family traditions.
- Make a family cookbook.
- Volunteer to shop for someone who’s homebound.
- Make holiday favors for hospital trays.
- Send flowers to someone who will be hospitalized on Christmas Day.
- Share your holiday dinner with a family who has a loved one in the hospital.
- Make a sourdough starter for homemade bread and share it (along with a baked loaf).
- Brush snow off other people’s windshields.
- Spread peanut butter on pine cones and dip them in birdseed, then put them on the windowsill to feed the birds.
- Clean your room without being asked.
- Leave a surprise on the doorstep of someone who has to work a holiday.
- Carpool so you only take up one parking space.
- Instead of buying gifts, write a poem and give it to a friend or loved one.
- Start now by performing one act of kindness each week until the holidays.
- Share what you did at the holiday dinner or keep it a secret and tell no one.
- Use your children’s (or a child’s) artwork to wrap gifts. (Most wrapping paper isn’t recyclable.)
- Make coupons for family members or friends: (good for…cleaning dishes, free hug, making bed, fixing dinner, washing car, etc.)
- Take a walk on a cold night all bundled up in layers.
- Make a snow angel.
- Buy yourself some holiday music.
*Adapted from: “Simple Gifts,” by Sharon Thompson in the Lexington Herald Leader, November 28, 1998, C 9-10.