Today, I read about a family who practiced a family tradition of placing white envelopes on their Christmas tree for their children to open on Christmas Eve. These envelopes were gifts to charities given in each of their children's names. Each child would have a donation made by their parents in honor of them to a different charity or need in the community.
What was so cool about this story was the parents said that as their kids got older they would actually be more excited about opening their envelope to see who would be the recipient of the gift that would be given in their name than any of the other gifts under the tree.
Now the two boys are grown and have founded the "White Envelope Project," which is a nonprofit organization dedicated to inspiring and enabling individuals and organizations to GIVE!
It's obvious how these parents influenced their children by their dedication to serving others. I was thinking during all of the chaos of Christmas shopping over Thanksgiving that maybe I would just wrap up some donations on the behalf of my family and friends
...something to think about.
