15 Selfless and Worthy Things to Do This Holiday Season

This holiday season is an opportune time for giving.  Even though there are many organizations committed to helping people in need, we can still lend a helping hand to individuals and families who are less fortunate.

For people with limited time and money to spare, it’s not necessary to volunteer countless hours — or donate large amounts of money to a charity. Even taking  small actions — like visiting a lonely senior citizen on Christmas Day, or cooking a meal for a family in need — can go a long way.

15 Selfless Things to Do This Holiday Season:

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1.)  Offer free help:  Helping an elderly person cross the street, or carrying a stranger’s grocery bags to their car, are kind deeds that don’t cost a dime. These uncomplicated acts of kindness go a long way — and are likely, greatly appreciated.

2.)  Adopt a family:  Participate in an adopt-a-family program this holiday season.  Give a family in need a Christmas they will never forget.  For every family you adopt, you can give them food certificates, toys for the children — as well as hygiene products and clothing for older children and adults.

3.)  Volunteer:  One of the most unselfish things you can do this holiday season — and the rest of the year — is the act of volunteering.  No matter what we choose to volunteer our time and efforts toward, volunteering is a selfless act.  It improves the community and may bring joy and happiness to people involved.

4.)  Cook a meal for others:  Consider treating a family to a home-cooked meal this holiday season.  This kind and noble action may mean a great deal to a family.

5.)  Give away something important to you:  A real test of selflessness is to give away things that are important to us.  We can even sell our items and donate the money to a charity or family in need.

6.)  Visit a nursing home:  Nursing homes can be sad and lonely places during the holidays.  Sadly, some elderly residents never have visitors and often spend the holidays alone. You can make these senior citizens feel loved by visiting them during the holidays.  Sending gifts or cards to them are also acts of kindness and generosity.

7.)  Participate in a food drive:  During the holiday season, food drives help to feed families in most communities. Whether you donate produce, gift certificates, or canned goods, food drives are effective at feeding hungry people. Food drives are always in need of donations, as well as volunteers to help in organizing the event and delivering food to families.

8.)  Donate:  Donating is another unselfish act that you can participate in this holiday season. Donating makes a big difference and is easy to do. You can donate money to the charity of your choice, donate clothes to a homeless shelter, or donate toys and food to needy families this holiday season.

9.)  Get involved in fundraising: Fundraising is another kind and noble way to help others this holiday season.  Fundraising is instrumental in raising needed funds for organizations.  It also helps in raising awareness for a cause that matters to you.

10.)  Take time to listen:  Consider taking time out to listen to a family member, friend, coworker — or even a total stranger.  Don’t interject with advice or share your opinion unless they ask for it.  Simply listen.

11.)  Serve food to the homeless:  Serving food to the homeless is a kind and caring thing to do.

12.)  Cover someone’s holiday shift:  Working during the holidays keeps people from spending quality time with their loved ones. Consider covering the shift of a coworker who needs to see his or her family this holiday season.  Your coworker will remember your sacrifice on his or her behalf.

13.)  Adopt a pet: Give a cat or dog a home this holiday season.  Adopt the pet from an animal shelter or rescue service. You’ll get satisfaction from having a new found friend and companion.  And your pet will have a second chance at life.

14.)  Pay it forward: Make someone’s day.  Pay for someone’s order in a drive-thru line or at a restaurant.  Even though they may not get a chance to thank you, you can be certain your thoughtful and kind gesture brings them some needed satisfaction and delight.

15.)  Write letters of appreciation: This holiday season, take the time to write letters of appreciation to people you really appreciate — family, friends, coworkers, and postal service workers — anyone who makes a difference in your day.

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15 Selfless and Worthy Things to Do This Holiday Season

Actual daily life worthy of an Alan Bennett play

Father: Ha! Properly, that is hospital, that is. I go to hospital, I come out and I can’t stroll on my bleedin’ leg!

Woman: Do you know why you can’t walk on your leg?

Father: Cos the medical doctor f—– about with it.

Girl: No.

Father: Yes they did.

Woman: No. Do you know how you harm your leg before they place you in hospital?

Father: No.

Woman: You wasn’t strolling effectively, you was dragging your feet. And then all of a sudden you stored falling.

[Father peers at her quizzically, unconvinced.]

I’ve quoted all this to consider to show that, although Safeguarding Our Dad and mom (Thursday, BBC Two) was a documentary, I felt at instances as if I were viewing a perform. A brilliant Television perform: unhappy, quiet, troubling, bleakly humorous, remorselessly realist the kind of Tv play Alan Bennettused to write. In the over scene – and I can’t aid calling it a scene, as if it have been scripted – we noticed a loving but exhausted daughter try out to purpose with Jim, her father, a guy who, despite his clear and rising difficulties, was established to stay residing at residence, alone, rather than be place in care.

INTERVIEW: Alan Bennett: ‘people shouldn’t feel I am cosy’

Other characters – once again, I can’t support saying characters – incorporated Betty, an elderly widow in hospital after a fall. Like Jim, she refused to countenance a potential anyplace other than her own home having triumphantly witnessed off the most recent efforts to coax her into care, she returned home, only to suffer an additional fall and be rushed to hospital once again.

She was pleasant, talkative, heroically stoic. We noticed her on her birthday, in hospital, getting bandages unwound from her foot. “I’ve reached another year of my daily life,” she announced to no a single in specific. “I wondered the place I’d be, what I’d be performing – anything at all superb or not. Nicely,” she concluded, thoughtfully, with no hint of self-pity, “I consider it’s got to come underneath the heading of ‘not’.”

^{Betty Williams on Safeguarding our Mother and father Photograph: BBC}

The first in a series about elderly care, the episode was a image of numerous people’s current, and several more people’s long term. Two thirds of hospital individuals nowadays are aged 65 or over. Quickly it will turn into the norm to spend more of our lives currently being looked right after by our children than we spent hunting after them. Perhaps I only convinced myself the programme felt like a play because I desired, so desperately, to believe it was fiction.

If you located it depressing you could often flip over to Parking Mad, exhibiting on BBC 1 at the very same time. You may well not have expected a documentary about targeted traffic wardens to be particularly amusing, but it frequently was, thanks to the fascinatingly childish behaviour of some of the wardens’ victims. In south London, a van driver was ordered to pay out the £500 in parking fines he’d racked up. He was outraged at the injustice. “You’re canines!” he shouted. “Absolute vermin! There’s folks raping young children and they get 3 months in jail!”

Hmm. Citation required.

We returned to him 10 minutes later. He was nonetheless ranting away. The warden had threatened to confiscate his van.

“There’s a law of this land!” protested the driver. “There’s a law of this land that you can not take a working man’s resources! That’s the law of the land!”

Hmm. Citation necessary.

One more man got fined for overstaying in a auto park. He swore vengeance. “I invested a good deal of money in this city yesterday. I’m going to make an energy not to invest a PENNY today!” Other individuals raged about speed cameras. What has turn out to be of the planet, when a guy can be penalised just for breaking the law.

Overview: Game of Thrones, episode 2: ‘King Joffrey requires centre stage’

As I mentioned final week of Game of Thrones (Monday, Sky Atlantic), it is not true that any character can die. One particular character who was well worth killing off, though, was King Joffrey (Jack Gleeson), and in this most current episode he was duly dispatched: poisoned at his wedding ceremony by unseen hands. A petulantly vicious adolescent psychopath, Joffrey was as well limited a character to protect: there was nowhere else to take him. The drama’s many other main villains – amongst them Joffrey’s mother Cersei and his “uncle” (i.e. father) Jaime – have mystery, unpredictability, and even likely for pathos. Joffrey was just a brat in a crown.

Read through: GAME OF THRONES: KING JOFFREY WAS LIKE JUSTIN BIEBER

Actual daily life worthy of an Alan Bennett play