Continuing the march towards Christmas with some more Creative Ideas from a bunch of you and the hope that you and your family or friends might find something new to experiment with or even take on as a new Christmas tradition:

Dané Benn: Hey Brett! I really enjoy your blogs and how it makes me think about things that are so relevant and important!

Every year for christmas since I was in high school, we’ve done christmas a little differently than we used to. We each pick a name from a hat, and that is the person you buy a gift for (normally limited to R100) and all the other money we would have spent on gifts and christmas lunch gets piled together and we spend it on making lunch boxes (cold meats, salads, drinks and a sweet treat) and we all jump in the car and go hand it out to the homeless in the inner city.

Afterwards we have lunch (normally the same as the lunch we handed out) and spend time together as a family. It really helped us to cut down on the excessive eating, overspending and wasting!

Keep writing about the hard things! Dané

Sammi Taylor: Hey b, these are two non commercial ideas for Christmas I’ve been looking at. The first cos it’s just a nice thing to do and the second as a gift for a friend who is a conservationist

http://www.tafta.org.za/ – sponsor Christmas lunch for the aged
https://www.sheldrickwildlifetrust.org/asp/fostering.asp?fostermore=1 – sponsor an orphaned elephant

Sammi

This idea was shared by Susan Webster on Facebook [something like 65 thousand times, not joking]:

Susan Webster: It’s the first year ( at 33) I don’t have a advent calendar !
Instead….
Every day , I will place something in this box …. Food, toiletries etc, then on Christmas Eve I will take it to a shelter or find a homeless person to give it to !
Let’s share this idea & makes someone else’s Christmas special.

 

box

Jez Baynes suggested checking out Brian Zahnd’s Word of Life Church Advent Calendar… but then also sent this combination of stories and activities which i really think is great!

Steven Lottering suggested the Advent Conspiracy Occupy Advent group on Facebook.

Thanks everybody – there really are so many creative ways we can celebrate this season in a way that doesn’t have to give in to the commercialism, greed and hedonism that is strongly encouraged. i hope you will be encouraged and challenged to take up some of these and perhaps even start some new family or friend traditions that look to transform in big and small ways. i also especially hope you will consider walking through some of these with your children if you have. Great life lessons to be learnt. Have a good one!

[For the rest of the Creative Christmas ideas from Part I, click here]