{"id":87625,"date":"2009-12-17T22:25:20","date_gmt":"2009-12-18T03:25:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.blisstree.com\/?p=136233"},"modified":"2009-12-17T22:25:20","modified_gmt":"2009-12-18T03:25:20","slug":"get-the-kids-to-be-secret-santas","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/87625","title":{"rendered":"Get the Kids to be Secret Santas"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Last year my son (age 11) got to take part in an Elks\u00a0program where they took select students out to spend a certain amount of money on themselves for<\/p>\n<div id=\"attachment_136234\" class=\"wp-caption alignleft\" style=\"width: 310px\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-136234\" src=\"http:\/\/images1.blisstree.com\/files\/2009\/12\/santa_claus1.jpg\" alt=\"IMG: Sxc.hu\" width=\"300\" height=\"298\" \/><\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-caption-text\">IMG: Sxc.hu<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p>Christmas. My son bought one item for everyone in the family, two gifts (small) for himself and even a gift for Toys For Tots. Now before you say anything he did this all on his own, I will admit he may have felt it was no big deal since every year we normally do this. The teachers and the Elk were all shocked by his behaviour and the fact he didn&#8217;t buy everything for himself like the majorityof the students did.<\/p>\n<p>I began thinking about this earlier this week when I started reading stories about &#8220;Secret Santas&#8221; around the country, most of the stories I read dealt with the ones in Kansas City. By now I&#8217;m sure many of you have heard of Larry Stewart, one of the Secret Santas that had passed out $1.3M before passing away from cancer. Before leaving this world he did pass this on to another &#8220;secret santa&#8221; who just recently enlisted a group of teens to help out. His response to the news media was we should start off young to begin the seed. I agree.<\/p>\n<p>How many of you think that allowing a child do a good deed for someone and knowing it really matters may change the way they feel? Have you ever given someone a $10 bill and saw that they really appreciated it? These teens that were enlisted were taken to thrift stores where they really got to help people out, I&#8217;ve heard of others passing out $20 bills on buses before leaving and some even shopping in toy stores and dropping off bags of presents while the kids are at school to help out the families. I think this would definitely put some type of seed in a child.<\/p>\n<p>I for one will continue to donate to Toys for Tots, allowing my children to pick out the toy and drop it in. Last year we also did the tree, where you take one item (name) and buy what the wish is. The girls felt great about picking out a jacket, shirt and scarf out for a little girl that we knew needed it.<\/p>\n<p>If you&#8217;d like to get your teens involved there are many programs that they can do:<\/p>\n<p>&#8211;\u00a0 The Wish Tree (inside stores such as Walmart)<br \/>\n&#8211;\u00a0 Volunteering at a homeless shelter<br \/>\n&#8211;\u00a0 Volunteering at a retirement home<br \/>\n&#8211;\u00a0 Donate to Toys for Tots<br \/>\n&#8211;\u00a0 Ask parents in the neighborhood if they&#8217;d allow them to take them through the store and purchase christmas items for mom and dad.<\/p>\n<p>If you can think of any please list them below.<\/p>\n<p>Post from: <a href=\"http:\/\/www.blisstree.com\">Blisstree<\/a><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.blisstree.com\/articles\/get-the-kids-to-be-secret-santas\/\">Get the Kids to be Secret Santas<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Last year my son (age 11) got to take part in an Elks\u00a0program where they took select students out to spend a certain amount of money on themselves for IMG: Sxc.hu Christmas. My son bought one item for everyone in the family, two gifts (small) for himself and even a gift for Toys For Tots. [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":185,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-87625","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/87625","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/185"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=87625"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/87625\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=87625"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=87625"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=87625"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}