North Texas Couple's Christmas-Themed Book Encourages Year-Round Kindness
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DALLAS (CBSDFW.COM) - A North Texas couple is trying to extend the Christmas spirit long after presents are opened and holiday ornaments are packed away.
Amelia Cardenas and her husband Arik started the "The Spirit Post," where children can send letters of kindness to the North Pole.
"We teach our children to have a moral compass and be kind for kindness sake," said the Lake Highlands mom.
The Christmas-themed book and toy helps spread kindness year-round.
It's the Cardenas' creative response to what they call a dip in kindness not only at Santa's workshop, but in the world.
"It's a spirit slump," Cardenas read to her daughter Arya and son Arlo the day they welcomed CBS11 into their living room. In fact, it's the very room where the idea was born, and thousands of copies of "The Spirit Post" were eventually packed by volunteer friends and family.
What's a spirit slump? The answer, unlike the complexity of the issue – is simple.
It's when the world is running short on Christmas spirit. And the Cardenas' are hoping to do something about it.
Many Christmas products and stories focus on threats and rewards as motivators for behavior: If you're "good," you will get presents; if you're "bad," you will get a lump of coal. That lesson may find some success during the lead up to Christmas, but it loses all its power Christmas morning, according to Cardenas. Santa comes and goes, and the threat/reward goes right out the chimney with him.
"The Spirit Post" is based on a recognition that lasting motivation is internal, according to Cardenas. It aims to make kindness part of kids' moral fabric by teaching them to think daily about how they can help other people. By regularly exercising their kindness muscles, kids will learn to be kind and act morally, according to Cardenas -- when no one is watching, no matter what they stand to gain or lose.
The couple hopes those lessons will help guide children's behavior long after Christmas. Also, "The Spirt Post" isn't possible without Santa's owl brigade. Children write notes of their kind deeds, put them in the owl's little messenger bag and leave the owl by the chimney.
The owl flies to Santa to spread word of their kind deeds.
The couple's little idea has grown into a big business as "The Spirit Post" owls fly off the virtual online shelves of Amazon.com.
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