Frost on the car before the baby pink fingers of dawn bring temperatures back to a more typical Arizona winter warm as I wend my way to work, Christmas music and holiday decorations in public waiting places catching and holding my patient’s eyes and multicolored light displays peppering my night road home; it must be Christmas!

December means a lot of things to me; respiratory illness is in full swing and my hands dry out from all the washing; the 201 half finished knitting projects form yarn mounds around me as the thirty or so Christmas movies I watch every year, reveal some new way to bring a laugh or a tear. Everything I want to shrink (like my thighs and my laundry pile) get bigger; and everything I want larger (like bank balance and available time) shrink to almost nothing.

But however cold, mucous filled (not so much mine as theirs) or exhausting December days are, every single one I get play Secret Santa to some unsuspecting stranger! Finances are at an all time low (as they are for so many people) so I don’t do anything big. My Guerrilla RAK (Random Acts of Kindness) rarely cost more than 5$ and sometimes cost nothing, but seeing a real smile delivered from Santa to a stranger via me, makes me smile all the way to my pancreas!
Try it, you’ll like it! I promise!