Light in a Dark World

It’s Christmas season, which officially is only a single day several weeks from now, it’s really a season. Parts of it (music—because it takes time to learn and prepare) start months ahead of time. I plan my Christmas card photo pretty far in advance too. This year I’m featuring my new grandbaby and her big brother in the nativity scene. This photo isn’t one I’m using, but here’s the little newborn.

Christmas reminds us of family, goodwill, giving, kindness—all things the Savior whose birth we celebrate would want us to remember. So it’s bigger than one day will hold. And we can sure use more of those good things for a longer time. Maybe long enough to become a habit, which some say takes at least three solid, consistent weeks.

If you want to enjoy the whole season—in ways totally separate from hustle, bustle, shopping, and pressure—then maybe you’ll want to join me in a celebration called #LightTheWorld. This is an initiative of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, but it’s for everyone. 

We did this last year too.

The idea is that each day you do something, small or large—but more likely small—that is a good deed, or kindness, or something that will make things better for others.

LightTheWorld Calendar

You can share your light in any way you want, but there’s a calendar with ideas for each day, if you’d like to follow that, with a scripture theme, a one-minute video, and ideas of things to do for each day. You can get all of this in any of 30 languages, so it really is meant for the whole world.

Here’s the video for Day 1:

You can see what other people have been doing. And you can share what you’ve done, if you want to. And if you use the hashtag #LightTheWorld on social media, then it’s searchable in ways hashtags are (a mystery to me).

I don’t know how we’ll measure the additional light after the 25 days. But I believe that we’ll each have a sense of greater light in and around us as we do this.

It’s an experiment, and experience, worth doing.