Help Us Spread Christmas Cheer and Raise $10,000 for the Library!

Thanks to two Secret Santas, there will be cheer for you, cheer for me, and cheer for the library this holiday season.

All you have to do is watch Christmas movies and/or do acts of kindness. In exchange, you’ll raise money for our building project and accrue OOPS credit, which you can use for library fines or bank to pay for copies and faxes.

Interested? Read on!

Last year, we asked our library supporters to participate in the Miracle on Spring Street Challenge, which Paul and Carol Engskov sponsored. Our goal was to raise $5,000, which we easily met. In fact, we met it so easily and quickly that Kristy Noble stepped in to sponsor an additional $5,000 to keep the challenge going. We ultimately raised $10,000 with the Miracle on Spring Street Challenge. The challenge was a huge success in other ways, too, because as soon as it wrapped up, we had excited patrons asking if we were going to do something similar for 2021.

The short answer is yes, yes, we are.

This year, however, we’re upping the ante even more, with two Secret Santas each contributing $5,000 if the community watches enough movies or creates enough bits of cheer for the It’s A Wonderful Life Christmas Cheer Challenge.

Every movie the community watches will be worth $1, so we need to watch a lot of Christmas movies. What kind of Christmas movies? Any kind of Christmas movie that your heart desires! Classic Christmas movies, modern Christmas movies, Christmas romances, Christmas comedies, even Christmas horror movies. (Yes, we have some. 😊 ) They all count. You can check them out from the library or watch your own copies.

Rewatching movies is also fine–if you want to earn money for us by watching National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation every day for a month, we will not judge you–and every person in the house who watches the movie can count it as one of the movies they watch.

Not a movie person? You can spread cheer. Every bit of cheer will also be worth $1, so we need to spread a lot of cheer. We are defining cheer as any small action that brings joy, laughter, or good spirits to another person. We have a whole list of suggested cheer you can spread–from sending Christmas cards to donating food to a food pantry to checking on elderly neighbors–but don’t feel limited to our list. Every act of cheer counts each time you perform it (each individual card sent, hello said, etc.), so your actions can quickly multiply into quite a bit of cheer. Just be sure to record each movie you watch and each bit of cheer you spread on the Beanstack app or on paper forms that you can pick up at the library or download right here. Our challenge kicked off on Thanksgiving Day, November 25, and runs through New Year’s Eve, December 31. Any movies watched or bits of cheer spread during this period count as long as they are logged.

The new twist this year is that you can also raise money to help yourself! For every bit of cheer that you document and report to the library, you can still raise $1 for the challenge, but you also raise $0.25 for OOPS credit on your account, up to $20. It’s a great way to take care of any fines you have on your account, and you can also use the credit to pay printing, copying, or faxing fees at the library.

There are lots of ways to participate this year so we really think there are no excuses. Get out there and spread cheer. . . and watch movies. 

What’s your cheer goal for the challenge? What are some of your favorite Christmas movies? What are some of your favorite ways to spread cheer? Want some Christmas movie recommendations? Need help navigating Beanstack? Tell us in the comments!