Share Your Christmas Spirit with Elderly Family and Friends

Christmas season holds a mixture of joy, melancholy, memories and loneliness for the elderly. You can do many things to brighten an elderly persons holiday season with gifts and services to make their lives easier.

Share Time, Share Christmas Many elderly family, friends and neighbors are alone and lonely during the Holiday season. Invite them to a family dinner, tea party or go visit with them one evening with a movie and meal in hand. Check to see if the person can use your help with shopping, holiday baking or even a visit to the doctor. Help them to put up a Christmas tree for their enjoyment and make a date for a day to have a take down the tree brunch. Share a bowl of soup and biscuits some evening when you are serving the meal up for your own family. One of the major causes of depression is too much time alone living with old memories and having no holiday activities to share in. If you are part of a social club suggest putting on a holiday supper some evening in early December and forgo the annual gift giving between club members. You still have a festive event but with no pressure of buying and receiving another gift you truly do not need. Instead give the elderly a sense of worth and holiday camaraderie. Have a recyclable tote for them to carry home with a few goodies in it. Canned goods, a flash light and batteries along with companionship are a life saver for the elderly.

Share your talent There are as many ways to share talents as their are talents. Put on a holiday show, invite local elderly to join in for free and enjoy the evening while you raise funds to help the local food cupboard or oil fund for the elderly. Another worthy project is for you, your family or group to start a list of the elderly in your area and assign volunteers to be aware of them during the season. Think of needs the elderly have, food, shelter, warmth. What is needed for your neighbor to have her home safe and assessable in case of an emergency? Does she need to have her walk way shoveled? Have your men's or adult supervised church youth group take one day a month to shovel and clear snow from doors, roofs and oil tank access. If an elderly couple have a wood stove contact a fireman and ask that the chimney be cleaned and pay for it yourself. Offer to carry and stack wood closer to the back door of the home. Call a local nursing home or rehabilitation center and make an appointment for your group to visit and sing Christmas carols to the occupants. Gift them with tiny food tray or window decorations.

Share your presence Spend some quiet time with an elderly person. Simply sit and share conversation and a cup of tea, coffee or cocoa. Play cards, cribbage, Scrabble or checkers and listen to the tales of a person who can certainly have much to teach you about a life lived. You'll be surprised what you can learn. Our local nursing home has a Scrabble tournament during the winter. Guests pay a fee to come in once a week to play with residents and other guests. The fund is for the activities director to do more for the residents. You can also trade books and have discussions about what you both are reading.

Share hope Help your elderly neighbor start a project that is enjoyable to that person. Make a quilt together, get her to teach you to knit or crochet, make greeting cards together, ask him to show you how to do woodworking or plan a garden together. Start tomato or flower seedlings after Christmas week to give you both hope that Spring is on the way. Winter can be long and hard for an elderly person. The cold makes it hard for them to get out and the dark days lend more chance for depression. If you have a docile pet take it over for a visit. Having a living creature to cuddle and talk to is a stress release for elderly people.

Share a suitable gift There are wonderful gifts you can make or purchase for an elderly person. It is a nice idea to give a gift of food but there may be diet restrictions. The best food gift to give is a gift card to a local grocery store. The elderly shopper can buy food items that they crave and perhaps not afford. (Do not be upset if the person turns around and gives you a batch of cookies or loaf of home made bread. The gift still gives them a sense of purpose.) Subscribe to a bird, woodworking, craft or other type of topic magazine that you know the elderly person is interested in. They are known to pore over a magazine or crossword puzzle book for hours of distraction.

It doesn't matter how you share with an elderly person this Christmas season as long as you give this wonderful gift of yourself to them. Be thankful as you share of yourself and pray that one day someone cares the same for you.