Excellent post Rommey!

As soon as we are old enough to understand that our Christmas Celebration would be about 'what we had done throughout the year as random acts of kindness' {generally around 7-9 yrs of age} instead of what Santa was going to bring us we all were given a nicely bound journal sometimes it was a fancy one, sometimes it was a homemade project taken on my some cousin or another! But the jest of this journal was to keep track & to promote the 'random acts of kindness' as well as being honest about your deeds of good will throughout that current year. Some children just cut pictures out of magazines that depicted: setting the table, cleaning, babysitting for siblings, feeding the pets, helping with yard work and they could get the neighbors or the family that they helped to sign & date their little 'Journal of GOOD DEEDS'.

No one seems to know who originally started this tradition but I've been doing this since I was in the 3 grade and I have read and looked at the journals that my grandmother and all of her siblings did and there are still a couple from my great grandmothers family and those books are very, very dear! And we are allowed to pick a couple of pages to read while were are having our evening soup & sandwiches on Christmas Eve. Now my family is reduced down to just Mom & I and my son when he can make it but I've got my dearly departed older sisters Journal and my closest brothers Journal and reading them on Christmas Eve to my mother brings back so many wonderful memories. I'm not in contact with the remaining 2 sisters & the oldest brother but none of them kept up this tradition, nor saw the purpose in it...if it wasn't about Christ {for the oldest sister} or gifts & money for the youngest sister or drugs and cigarettes for my druggie brother...then they considered it a complete waste and a stupid thing to do.

What a shame...we were raised so 'DIRT POOR' and that was the one thing, the absolute one thing that my grandparents wanted to instill in us...CHARITY BEGINS AT HOME!