10 ways to savor and celebrate through the next 10 days.

1) Lists- make lists for everything and enjoy the victory of crossing off items as you accomplish, purchase, or tackle them (do something that needs to be done and it’s not on your list? Add it and cross it off!)

2) Simplify- we tend to do too much, give too much, cook too much, eat too much, purchase too much. Trim it down by at least one, hopefully more than one item.

3) Watch an “oldie but goodie” with a young person. Rent, borrow, or pull out ”Miracle on 34th Street”, ”White Christmas”, ”It’s a wonderful life”, ”A Christmas Story”, “Little Drummer Boy” or one of the countless other ”older” Christmas Specials with a young child or teen. Share a bit of time now watching something from then.

4) Visit the church nativities here in town. If the weather is good you can easily walk from one scene to another and see quite a few beautiful Nativities right here in the center of Lemont. Walk from St. Patrick’s to St. Matthew’s to Bethany Lutheran’s to St. Cyril’s, to St. Alphonsus and then back to St. Pat’s. Walk it, or drive it with your kids, spouse, friend, or spend some time alone visiting, thinking, praying, slowing down to be reminded what the approaching day is about.

5) What is your absolute favorite Christmas Song? Pull it out and listen to it. Don’t just play it, listen to it. Sing along and enjoy it like you did when it became your favorite song.

6) What is your biggest stress right now? Christmas Shopping? Meal planning? Pressures of family visits? Finances? Health? Sit down and write/type a letter to yourself as you would to your most beloved relative, friend offering them your most sincere and genuine advice on how to handle this stress. Treat this letter/email with the most sincere of efforts offering the most positive and realistic advice you can muster. Put it aside after you have finished. Then come back to it and read it. Sometimes when we view our biggest pressures from outside of our own heads we can process things in a completely different and very helpful way.

7) Do one thing for you- do you have some ”you” time scheduled in the next few days? Sit down and slowly sip on a cup of tea. Talk a walk. Take a bath. When the kids are asleep sit up for just a bit and soak in the quiet of the night and beauty of the Christmas lights. Even if it is locking the bathroom door and reading one positive story, passage, article, or quote. Do something for you.

8) Do one thing for someone you know that needs it- send a card via snail mail, make that call that you haven’t had time for, stand outside and talk to a neighbor instead of just the nod of a head and a wave in the glow of the reverse lights. There are so many people that are closest to us that we short on time. Make that effort within the next 10 days.

9) Do something for someone you don’t know- a random act of kindness- anonymously. Pay for the person behind you. Donate to a Christmas Outreach (perhaps Hope and Friendship’s Care Boxes or Christmas Dinners?? :-) visit www.hopeandfriendshipfoundation.com for more details). It has been proven that one’s spirits, attitude and outlook is positively improved when an unselfish action is committed. You will feel better and so will someone else.

10) Last but most important: breathe when you feel you can’t handle anything else; feel the energy but don’t be stung by it; listen to the children and hear the innocent excitement of a child; be alone at some point every day; be purposeful in every effort, gift, and wish you offer; commit to making this Christmas about presence not presents; and know that Christmas did not come from chaos but from calm. Christmas is the celebration of the birth of a baby that was born in the most meager and humble of circumstances to parents who had nothing to offer but commitment, faith, and love. Not a coin between them to rent a room or a decent bed, without a parade of family and friends to celebrate the miracle with, no support of any kind from any person, yet that moment stands as the pinnacle of the whole point of this countdown of days to mark THAT day and THAT event that we still celebrate to this day more than 2000 years later.

Simple, humble, rough around the edges, far from perfectly planned, yet of pure and true beauty in a setting filled with peace, love and a calm celebration of life, love and peace.

May your Christmas be filled with the same simple, humble, unplanned yet wonderful happenings, pure in beauty and filled with peace, true and heartfelt laughter and happiness and above all love.

One day closer on the journey toward Christmas.

www.hopeandfriendshipfoundation.com

Email info@hopeandfriendshipfoundation.com for more information on how to join in on making ripples.