The 12 Days of Joy...

You know that elf dude that hangs out on the shelf and sometimes can be seen doing pranks on his family...  yeah the freaky looking thing in red....  well I could never get in on all that.  I don't mean to offend all you moms and dads that think he or she is the best thing since sliced bread, but I just could never get real excited about him.  If it works for your family, AWESOME! 

Then a friend shared the idea of a Kindness Elf with me.  Wow?  Really?  An elf that comes to live with you and gives you ideas of things you can do for OTHERS?  The true gift of Christmas is giving to those around us, not expecting some trinket, and this elf is helping us teach this.

The kindness elf isn't about some little NSA agent sitting on your shelf reporting your every move to some fat man sitting in a "workshop" somewhere. *grin* Yeah, think about it.....  I thought for sure the elf should come with dark glasses and a headset.....  FREAKY!  We have too much big brother the way it is. 

Oh, I better stop my political rant before it really starts..... 

Back to the kindness elf.... 

 Christmas is about giving, not because you expect something in return.  Its my hope to use this as a reinforcement/teaching aid to encourage this desire to help others that my Bear has. 

Basic idea: 

The Kindness Elf joins your family every December and assists in counting down to the advent.  Every day, over the course of the month the elf will leave a note for her/his children.  Each day there is to be a different kind deed for the child(ern) to perform.  It might be baking cookies for your neighbor, sweeping the stoop for mom, loading the wood basket for dad....  things that show thought and kindness that you would not normally do as a matter of course (chores). 

For our family we have chosen to start the tradition on the 12th day before Christmas.  I don't want our elf to lose her "magic" appeal to my six year old, plus, despite looking everywhere for a couple weeks I had to resort to making an elf to match what I wanted. The Elf on the Shelf are everywhere, but nothing about Kindness Elves.  I wanted a peaceful country looking little elf; something with homespun clothes and an "old fashioned" air about her.  Something a child could love, and not be friendgthend of in the least.  Something a child could hug! 

So with out further ado, I introduce you to JOY.  She didn't have a name until the Christmas spirit came to her (we narrowed it down from a half dozen to three.  Joy was the top runner out of the three). 

I will be posting the things that Joy encourages us to do in our quest of being kind to others every day.

What kinds of things do you do to encourage kind deeds?