“ Holy Hacks: Everyday Ways to Live Your Faith and Get to Heaven ” is a book by Catholic writer and journalist Patti Maguire Armstrong.
The list is as follows:
1. Advent is all about waiting. You must always be patient, whether in traffic or in long lines. You must pray while you wait.
2. Be grateful for everything you have. Contemplate your many gifts and everything around you, from the comforts to the people around you.
3. Don’t make it a problem if someone uses greetings like “happy holidays” or something else. You just have to be grateful and wish people a Merry Christmas.
4. Simplify the Christmas celebration seeking to achieve the spirit of the first Christmas, next to the manger. Armstrong states that “if Jesus wanted to promote consumerism, the Nativity would have taken place in a shopping mall.”
5. Put together a manger.
6. Get an Advent Wreath. It must be lit every day and pray next to it.
7. Sing Advent songs before Christmas.
8. Watch movies about the true Christmas story.
9. Sing Christmas carols.
10. Send Christmas cards to people who may feel lonely, like soldiers abroad or prisoners. You can tell them that you will pray for them during the New Year.
11. Write notes and prayer intentions for Jesus during Advent and place them in the nativity scene.
12. Find ways to be generous to the family whether it’s food preparation or Christmas activities.
13. Don’t forget a gift for your parish priest or priest friend.
14. Donate toys, clothes or money before Christmas. You should give away the things you still like. That is making a small sacrifice and truly offering it for Jesus. Money can also be saved for charities that help those in need or to buy items that allow these people to celebrate the real Christmas.
15. Ask the Holy Family to help make Advent holy.
(Originally published in the National Catholic Register)