Anticipation, when shared with a group of people, can create a memory almost as palpable as any gift you can buy.

Birthdays we anticipate alone.  You have yours, I have mine, and while we might both be excited about the arrival of our respective days, we experience the anticipation alone.

Christmas and Chanukah are different.  During the holiday season, we get to anticipate together - in community.  We watch commercials, listen to the radio, pass decorated storefronts and, jointly, anticipate the magic of the holidays.  We look forward to lights; holiday cards with updates from family and friends; baked goods; holiday concerts and office parties; quiet evenings in front of the fire place; annual holiday traditions; and wondering what might be waiting under the tree.  These are things so many of us universally love about this time of year. 

There is shared anticipation for Christmas and Chanukah and, somehow, it is the sharing that creates a communal feeling so palpable that the anticipation itself becomes part of the gift.

For the past sixteen weeks students in my class have been depositing money into a Good News Dollars Jar whenever something happened that they wanted to brag about to the rest of the class.  Our agreement was half the money would go to a local non-profit agency and the other half, through luck of the draw, would go to one of them.

Yesterday one of the students in my class won $164.00.

I could have drawn a name from a hat.

I could have presented the money to a student whose guess came closest to a number between 1-100.

I could have coordinated a holiday grab bag, allowing one lucky winner to draw an envelope of money.

None of those options would have created a sense of anticipation that could be shared by the community members.  The name would have be drawn by me, a number guessed, or the package selected and, a second or two later, the moment would be over.  Minimal anticipation.  Opportunity lost.

Instead, I took the advice of a friend.  I brought one gift box, wrapped with red ribbon, for each student in the class.   Only one of the boxes contained a note inside reading, "Congratulations, you are the lucky winner."  For close to five or eight minutes I used this very fun, very fast-paced version of Twas the Night Before Christmas to build shared anticipation.  Who would win the $164.00?  

In the end, Madie left with the money.  But, I believe the real gift - the one that will be emblazoned in their memories of freshmen year - will not be the $164.00 burning a hole in Madie's pocket this holiday season.  I believe the thing most remembered will be the community created by the laughing and joking and anticipation involved in selecting a winner.

There was a sense of anticipation in class the other day, shared by the community and so strong, that the experience actually felt like the gift itself.

How about you?  Are you a part of a community (family included) where, this holiday season, you could use this fun version of Twas the Night Before Christmas to create the gift of anticipation?  Visit us in the Community Forum labeled, Today's Post and tell us how you might use it.

Shining off until tomorrow...