30 Nov 2020

For those of you who go near a church, you’ll know Advent has begun.

Or

For those of you with children who have Advent calendars filled with chocolate, you will know the daily dose of sugar begins tomorrow at the beginning of December.

I have seen adult versions of advent calendars I would like to try one year – there’s a gin variety, a wine variety, and more. I’m not sure I could sustain 25 days of drinking though – a small dose of daily chocolate sounds much easier.

Anyone who spends time flicking through Pinterest will know there’s lots of kids activities that you can do in the lead up to Christmas, on the advent calendar theme.

You could have an advent calendar with a daily activity for kids to do, rather than eat chocolate (or drink gin..). Helpful activities like delivering treats to neighbours or friends, donating school supplies to a teacher, donating toys, bake cookies, play a family game etc.

There’s one idea that says to get a jar with 25 ice cream sticks in it, and each day you write down something you have that you are grateful for – electricity, computers, pets etc. You add up how many of those things you have in your house and pledge to donate an amount of money to charity, according to how many of these things you have. Get the kids running around the house counting power outlets, for example. Maybe while eating chocolate and drinking gin.

There’s a kindness advent calendar, where instead of playing a game of eating chocolate, you challenge children each day to do something nice, to be kind, to speak to the kid at school no one likes, etc.

It’s all about the lead up to Christmas – which is getting close, if the decorations and music and advertising in the shops hasn’t given you the hint.

One of the Advent calendars I saw was titled “It takes a Village” advent calendar, and was filled with those sort of kindness activities for adults – do a chore for someone, leave a treat for the postman/delivery driver, put birdseed out for birds etc.

So I had a thought this morning that we should give ourselves a little pre-Christmas project – our HLD village challenge, if you will.

It’s not eating chocolate, and it’s not drinking gin. It’s not creating art projects or donating money for all our power points in our house.

Let’s acknowledge each other.

My challenge to us all, is to thank someone. If you can set yourself a number of more than one, and maybe set yourself a challenge to thank one person on day one, two on day two, three on day three – go for it! But if that is too much administration work to remember…..just…..thank…..one

Every day.

From now until Christmas.

Let’s go, HLD village 🙂