Twelve Days of Christmas

It is a tradition to have some type of advent calendar that marks the approaching holiday. Try these suggestions, and start 12 days before Christmas.

• Pick a person or family who needs a little cheering up. Secretly leave them a special thought or treat each night for 12 days before Christmas.

• Offer to baby-sit for your mother so she can go Christmas shopping alone.

• Send a Christmas card to someone who doesn’t expect one from you.

• Do something special for someone anonymously.

• Resolve to write thank-you notes to everyone who needs to receive one from you this year.

• Try a new Christmas cookie recipe. If they turn out, take some to your neighbors.

• Learn one new Christmas carol.

• Help make the yard look more festive and inviting. Shovel the walks, mow the lawn, or trim the bushes.

• Read a special Christmas story to younger brothers or sisters or children in the neighborhood or ward.

• Take a long walk and enjoy the beauty of the world.

• Record in your journal the special traditions that your family has to celebrate the holidays.

• Bear your testimony of Christ.

(December 1987, p. 40.)