It's time to dream up gift ideas, write those cards, and drink your way through uncomfortable reunions and holiday work parties. Thank God it comes only once a year. But in all fairness the holidays are a good reminder to think of others, the world around us, and strive to make small steps in the right direction.


Charlie Brown Christmas


Scrooged

Here are a couple sites I've come across where you can easily help others without spending a dime or leaving your chair. What a wonderful contradiction of being slothful AND outgoing. I'm actually kind of addicted to the Free Rice vocabulary challenge.

Free Rice - For each word you define correctly, 20 grains of rice are donated to help end world hunger.

The Hunger Site, etc. - Each tab on the site has an equally important cause and allows you to prompt a donation to the cause simply by clicking on the site. You can also buy holiday gifts through this site.

I also find a lot of great gift ideas at Ten Thousand Villages, which also practices fair trade.


Holiday Favorites:

Beck - Little Drum Machine Boy

Charlie Brown Christmas - Linus & Lucy

Joni Mitchell - River

James Brown - Funky Christmas

The Waitresses - Christmas Wrapping

I have always thought of Christmas time, when it has come round, as a good time; a kind, forgiving, charitable time; the only time I know of, in the long calendar of the year, when men and women seem by one consent to open their shut-up hearts freely, and to think of people below them as if they really were fellow passengers to the grave, and not another race of creatures bound on other journeys. ~Charles Dickens