Planning for Next Christmas

"What?!  You're already thinking about next Christmas?!"

Yes.

Part of our goal as a family is to give more.  I've blogged time and time again about my quest to give one item away each day.  And while I've missed a day or two here and there, the action and discipline of giving has had the effect I had hoped.  For now, I am habitually looking for ways to give away belongings I do not use, money of which I have excess, and time which can be used to help others.

Which brings me to NEXT Christmas.

This week, our family started a Christmas Jar.  Let it be said that I have no intention of reading the book attached to this project.  I've got enough reading to do.

The chore thing in our house ebbed and flowed all through 2010.  The kids have gone through periods of being spot on with completing their chores, followed by weeks of inconsistency - an endless back and forth of paying them or not paying them for the completion of the specific responsibilities each one has been given.  I've written about our family, um, "system" (I can't stand that word), here.  I actually like our current plan, even if the chores are only getting done maybe 65% of the time, so this is not some big announcement that we're chucking it.

Rather, we're adapting it.

Enter, The Christmas Jar.

We mentioned this idea to the kids a few nights ago and the response was favorable:  upon completing a chore, rather than receiving coins for themselves, all spare change (whether chore-related, or that random dime you find in the washer) will be placed in the jar.  All. Year. Long.

Come Christmas, we will anonymously give our jar of spare change to someone who needs it.  One person.

Harper's response, "Can I put my tithe in the jar?"  I was more than fine with this.  Spirit of the law. In went her quarter.

Zane?  Not sure he got it. But he likes the clinking sound the coins make when they get thrown in.

The kids are still so "high in sky" from receiving Christmas gifts and have birthdays to look forward to this month, so any thoughts of buying items for themselves is thankfully off their radar screens. Perhaps this is why the idea went over so very well.  They are currently well stocked.

The jar is visible - right on the kitchen windowsill.  So, if you stop by, and have some coinage jingling away in your pocket - drop it on in.

We'll make sure it gets to the right person in December.

We're pretty sure God will make that person as clear to us as the glass of the jar itself.

He's cool that way.