How to add meaning to the holidays

KEN WERT photo: meanttobehappy.com

Korina Sanchez never fails to make all her friends feel special during the holidays and even when there’s no occasion. Beneath her feisty image, she’s such a sweetie.

More than the fab gifts she sends, it’s her handwritten message on the card that I treasure. She’s not one to just write a generic holiday greeting. Korina really takes time to write a personal message meant for you alone. In this age of e-mail and SMS, the beauty of the written word endures.

This year, along with her Christmas gift and card, she tucked a scroll, on which was written “25 Ways to Add Meaning to the Holidays” by Ken Wert.

Allow me to share some of Wert’s timely tips, from my dear “Sis” Korina. I cannot thank her enough for never being too busy to be a friend.

Give a creative gift from the heart (something homemade) instead of busting your budget or depleting your life savings.

Create a stocking full of treats and gifts and place them on the doorstep of someone you know who has lost his job or has no family.

Deliver a food basket to a homeless person.

Write a letter telling someone you love (or someone you need to forgive or who you’ve offended) how much you care for them and appreciate them, as you wish them a Merry Christmas.

Make doing a good deed every day from this reading to the end of the year an annual part of your Christmas tradition.

Read the Christmas story in the Bible to see how it all started.

Sit down with your family and establish some new traditions that will give meaning to the season and to the future.

Read “How the Grinch Stole Christmas,” “A Christmas Carol” and “Little Women,” or any other favorite work that touches on the deeper elements of the holiday.

Have each of the kids choose one of their gifts to take to a poor family who otherwise won’t have much of a Christmas.
Give the gift of living better, kinder, more honest, more committed to your family, gentler; with more courage and compassion and love and forgiveness, more faithful and hopeful; and positive and thoughtful as you finish the year and begin a new one.

Amid all the revelry and merrymaking, let’s not forget whose birthday it is. He is truly what the season is all about.