I love Christmas, it’s my favorite time of year, however to some, the thought of Christmas fills them with dread and that can be for the most trivial of things like a hate for shopping and those busy shops during the festive season or it can be for greater reasons such as having lost a loved one recently, a poorly family member, or being homeless. Every one of us has a story and that story will have an impact upon how we feel towards the festive season.

I’ve already completed most of my Christmas shopping and we aren’t even into to December yet! My daughters’ advent calendars are at the ready for the opening of the first window on Sunday and they are bursting with excitement for the early morning chocolate hits that are only ever acceptable at this time of year, but what they are more excited about is the ‘random acts of kindness’ advent calendar that I’m running alongside it. This idea came from a friend who had found it in a kid’s magazine and shared it in our ‘Mummyhood’ WhatsApp group. I love the concept and it’s all my girls keep talking about, they have said after their random act of kindness they will then reward themselves with a chocolate from their advent calendar and they cannot wait to get started. What better way to teach your children to be kind than to show them first-hand how good it feels doing kind things for others.

But why should these random acts of kindness stop at my children? We have decided as a practice to run random acts of kindness during the working days of advent and we would like you to follow us in our journey as we share each random act of kindness that we perform daily on our social media.

For me personally, it has made the lead up to Christmas even more exciting, I get great pleasure from seeing people’s reactions to the gifts I buy for them at Christmas but the thought of lighting up a strangers day especially when their story could be quite dark, that for me, is what makes the world go round. Helping others is what we should all strive to be about. The more we help one another, the more we help the world, treat everyone with respect and they will treat you with respect and this revolving door approach to kindness is what we need to see each day. Kindness takes shape in many forms; it can be an action that surprises a stranger, or it can be a smile sent across the room.

How great are our team going to feel carrying out kind gestures not just for our clients but for the wider population of Ipswich? We might only have an impact on a handful of people during the lead up to Christmas but imagine if this idea inspired others to do the same and the kindness spread further afield.