As we head towards the silly season and Christmas, you might be feeling a bit like a grinch after the year that has been 2020.
If you feel like you need to get a bit more Christmas Spirit, you might want to try and activate some random acts of kindness around your community to spread some love and joy.
It could be something fun to do with your family or colleagues at work too.
Here are 30 acts of random community kindness that you could incorporate into your days leading up to Christmas:
- Leave extra time in the parking meter or fill an expired or about to expire parking meter.
- Sing Christmas Carols, play board games, or visit with senior citizens at a nursing home.
- Help your neighbours put up their Christmas lights.
- Put sticky notes with positive messages in public places.
- Pay for someone's groceries behind you in line.
- Take flowers to the local nurses working at your local hospital – the nurses will know who needs them most.
- Pay for the lunch of people behind you at a fast-food restaurant or behind you in the drive-thru.
- Take lunch, cookies, or cupcakes to your local fire department and/or police department.
- Donate stuffed animals to police and fire departments to use during emergencies to help calm frightened children.
- Put change in a row of vending machines.
- Buy extra groceries for the local food bank.
- Pick up the tab when dining out. Approach the waiter and pay when no one is watching.
- Tape a plastic bag of quarters to a washer or dryer at the laundromat.
- Purchase some extra dog or cat food and drop it off at an animal shelter.
- Leave a $5 taped to the entrance of a car wash or tape a gift certificate for a free car wash to a stranger's car.
- Donate some of your clothes you don't wear to charity.
- Bring coffee to construction workers, police on detail, or anyone working outside.
- Pay for the coffee or the bus fare for the person behind you.
- Be understanding of travelling parents with the grumpy or noisy kids.
- Sing an employee's praises to a manager or on a comment card — a little recognition goes a long way.
- Volunteer an afternoon at a soup kitchen.
- Bake something delicious and bring it into work for lunch for you and all your colleagues to enjoy.
- Put a comment on someone's webpage that you really like……let them know you enjoy it. ;-)
- Leave nice comments on Twitter, and Facebook.
- Drop off a toy or game at a hospital or a homeless shelter.
- Donate colouring books and boxes of new crayons to the paediatric wing of a hospital.
- Make handmade cards for all your loved ones this Christmas and tell them just how much they mean to you.
- Send your friends a text telling them you are thinking of them.
- Leave candy canes on the windshields of random cars.
- Invite someone you suspect will be alone to spend your holiday celebrations with you.