DailyGood

For the last 27 years, DailyGood newsletters have offered a daily email that inspires you to respond to life with creativity and kindness. To join a community of 151,976 subscribers, subscribe here.

Dec 24, 2007

"One great reason why men practice generosity so little in the world is their finding so little there. Generosity is catching; and if so many men escape it, it is in a great degree from the same reason the countrymen escape the smallpox -- because they meet no one to give it to them." --Sir Fulke Greville

Secret Santa 2.0

Larry Stewart, Kansas City's original Secret Santa, anonymously wandered city streets doling out $100 bills to anyone who looked like they needed it. For about a quarter century, Stewart quietly gave out more than $1.3 million to people in laundromats, diners, and thrift stores, saying it was his way of giving back for all that he had received in his lifetime. Stewart died of cancer earlier this year, but his legacy lives on: this Christmas, an anonymous friend who told Stewart in the hospital that he would carry on for him is out on the streets, handing out $100 bills, each one stamped with "Larry Stewart, Secret Santa," giving away $75,000 in total of his own money. "Anyone can be a Secret Santa," he says. "You don't have to give away $100. You can give away kindness. Help someone."