As a way to teach her children the true meaning of Christmas and create a holiday tradition, local resident Lori Hynes decided to turn an idea she saw online into her own reality last year.
As a way to teach her children the true meaning of Christmas and create a holiday tradition, local resident Lori Hynes decided to turn an idea she saw online into her own reality last year. This year, she will again use the month of December to perform 25 random acts of Christmas kindness, with her family at her side.
As a child growing up, Hynes remembers her family taking part in many holiday traditions, such as donating to the Salvation Army and pledging Christmas carols on the radio. She says she grew up thinking it was normal to help people out, and points to the example of her mother cooking turkeys and bringing them to people who didn’t have any.
When the Hynes family moved to St. Paul, they weren’t sure where to go or who to give to. After a couple years of being in town and away from their extended family, Hynes realized her children were getting more and more spoiled at Christmas.
They wanted every toy they saw in the Wish Book, says Hynes, adding, “They just had a case of the gimmies.&”
She quickly saw the possibility that her children wouldn’t know the true meaning of Christmas and decided to take action, saying, “I want to teach my kids to give back to people.&”
When she came across the idea on Pinterest of performing random acts of kindness, she knew it would be a good fit for her family. She made something similar to an advent calendar and placed a random act into 25 slots, one for each day in December leading up to Christmas.
She says she has seen other ways of putting the acts together, such as placing folded up papers into a mason jar and drawing one out randomly each day. Following through on the acts has been a blessing for everyone in the family.
“You get the satisfaction of knowing you did something nice,&” she says.
Last year, her son decided to give some of his teachers a special little gift. When he handed one of the teachers the gift, Hynes says she could see that the teacher got a little teary-eyed, and her son walked away proud, knowing she had liked the gift. Another time, he handed a random customer at a coffee shop a free gift card, and Hynes says she will remember for a long time the twinkle in her son’s eye afterwards.
This year, her four-year-old daughter was so excited to start her random acts that she asked to start early, and requested she and her mom bring her Zumba teacher flowers one day in November.
Although Hynes isn’t interested in being acknowledged for performing the random acts, she has found that sharing her family’s experience has helped create awareness about the idea, and it has brought about a lot of curiosity from other people who are interested in doing similar things with their families.
“We want a chain reaction . . . It can turn into a huge ripple effect,&” says Hynes.
The idea behind performing the random acts of kindness is that the people doing them remain somewhat anonymous, says Hynes, but at the same time it’s important that people on the receiving end realize what’s being done, so they can pass on the message. And so, Hynes prints out little cards that the family hands out to people, stating they’ve been RACK’ed (Random Act of Christmas Kindness).
Being far from her family, which is in Newfoundland, is hard, especially at Christmas, Hynes notes. Sometimes, a few extra smiles and acts of kindness during the holiday season are all that is needed to make things a little better, she said.
