Are you one of those people that loves to give presents more than you love receiving them? Me, too! While I know I didn’t invent the idea of “paying it forward” I did start one of my favorite ways to incorporate this idea into the holiday season last year with my best friend. When you’ve been best friends with someone for twenty years you start to realize that there really are few original gift exchange ideas left and that, really, your friendship is already the best gift of all. So, to that end, let me share what we started last year and what I hope becomes an annual event with even more people on my holiday gift exchange list.

• Set a limit on how much you are going to “pay forward” to strangers over the holiday season.
• Have everyone involved come up with their own ways to do so.
• Do your various acts of kindness for strangers and then email each other updates as you do so.
• Sit back and enjoy all the tales of the little things you’ve done and how people reacted.
• Realize that it truly is better to give than receive.

Need a few examples of things we’ve done to get you started?

• When you’re in line for your daily coffee, purchase a $5 gift card and hand it to someone in line on your way out. Same goes for lunch at your favorite lunch spot.
• Pay for the lunch of the person behind you in the drive-thru.
• Reward that extra helpful dressing room attendant by giving her a gift card to the store. (My sweet lady waited three weeks for me to come back in and then handed me a very heartfelt handwritten thank you/holiday card. She ended up making my day more than I could have ever made hers.)
• Put something extra into the office “Adopt a Family” pool.
• Shovel your neighbor’s driveway when you do yours.

Your spending limit can be large or small, it truly is the thought that counts. Trust me when I tell you that if you start this tradition with your friends, you will want to keep it going all year long!

Happy Holidays!

--Amy Belle Isle Founder of stem parties, an event planning business in St. Louis, Missouri that specializes in décor and event planning for small parties for the big events in your life. You can find more easy to recreate ideas to make your next event special at http://stemparties.blogspot.com/.