LETTERS / Operation Christmas Kindness – A Local Story

To whom this may inspire,
 
I have attached a local story about my son and our family’s actions this holiday season to spread Christmas cheer while raising money for a charity. We hope you enjoy! Merry Christmas!
   
Sincerely, 
        The Maynard Family
 

My name is McKenzie. I am the mother of a wonderful, kind, and giving 4-year-old-boy named Koen. I know every parent thinks that about their child but continue to read on and I’ll explain why I feel this way about my little boy.

In the last two years, Koen has told me and his father that he wanted to be Santa Claus so he can do good and help people find Christmas cheer. The last few times he has told us this, we have thought it was cute and went on with the holiday season, but this year was different. Koen has been persistent in his request for a Santa outfit and when we ask him why his answer is always the same. He wants to spread Christmas cheer and help people that need food, clothes, and toys for Christmas. Realizing that this is not some cute fluke and that he was seriously wanting to do this, his father and I felt inspired by this and decided that we would help him in his request to spread Christmas cheer while raising money for families in need. We ordered him a Santa costume and we got an Elf costume for his father to take up the role of being Santa’s helper. We created a Facebook page and a fund-raising account through Fundly.com. We set the goal to reach $200.00 to donate to the local WAMY Community Action Organization. We have purchased small sleigh bells for Koen to hand out to random people to spread some Christmas cheer while spreading the word about Koen’s fundraising account in hopes that people will return the kind gesture to either our cause or just randomly so someone else that they meet this holiday season. So far, we have given over 100 bells to people in the town of Boone with the card attached that I have provided in the images below. We have received nothing less than absolute kindness from all that we have met and interacted with this Christmas season and we wish to thank everyone for that! Our goal to grant our sons Christmas wish of being Santa so he can inspire acts of kindness and evoke the Christmas spirit within others this holiday season has been a blessing for us as parents as well. To receive the love and support by so many strangers that we met along the way thus far has also been very humbling for all of us as well. We plan to go out in Boone today and tomorrow to continue spreading Christmas cheer to everyone and see if we can’t get closer to the fundraising goal before Christmas. If we make it then great! If not, we will never be able to say that it was not worth every second of the time we spent trying. Our town is full of special and kind people. It took my 4-year-old Christmas wish to make his parents and others see that because in the hustle and bustle of life, sometimes we lose sight of the strangers that surround us in the very town we live in. We want to wish everyone a Merry Christmas and a very happy New Year. One good deed or act of kindness always sparks another.