While the holidays are touted as a time to bring communities together, they can often have the opposite effect, especially in terms of a residential community. People leave town to visit their friends and families or host their friends and families, and this is wonderful!
However, it does mean that the members of the residential community have little opportunity to see each other and bond. However, when the holly jolly of it all wears off, and people come home or take down their decorations, that is a time when members of a community can feel the most alone. This means it’s the perfect time for them to come together! Of course, wait a little while for members of the community to recharge after the holidays, but after that, here are a few ideas for events to use the New Year to bring your community together.
1. Resolution buddies
We have known since the inception of New Year’s Resolutions that everyone’s got similar ones. Most people want to become more mindful, or practice gratitude, or get up earlier, or start exercising. This is a well-known fact, but a lot of those practices are so much easier when you have someone doing them with you! Also, if you’ve ever tried implementing any of these practices and tried to get a friend to come along with you, it can be incredibly frustrating to be the more devoted one! Members of the community should be encouraged to find people who have similar resolutions to them and work together. Maybe organize a Resolution Brunch with coffee and snacks and have the potential joggers and aspiring early birds find each other and make plans!
2. Belated white elephant
White elephant is an incredibly fun game usually enjoyed at holiday parties early in the season. If you’re not familiar, it’s a game where every participant brings a wrapped gift and there’s a series of lighthearted stealing and manipulating among the group until everyone ends up with a gift, whether they’re happy with it or not. After the holidays, most of us end up with gifts that we aren’t sure what to do with. We know you love your Aunt Meredith, but we also understand that you don’t have space for another sock monkey. Organize a post-holiday white elephant gift exchange and have everyone bring a gift at Christmas that wasn’t their favorite, or just something around the house that they can part with (one never knows what the coveted gift might be.) It will be a fun event, and it will be a wonderful way to bring the community back together to tell each other stories of the holiday season and bring some of that joy into the new year!
3. Swap Meet
One of the most common activities for people around the new year is cleaning up and reorganizing their space after the absolute chaos that the holidays create. But also, there is always available joy in finding treasures that didn’t cost a lot of money. The end of the year creates a difficult situation for people because it is an incredibly trying time financially, but also it’s a time when people like to re-envision themselves (which often means acquiring new things.)
Organizing a community swap meet could benefit the community in multiple ways! The first is that it could motivate people to get some cleaning and organizing done that they’ve been putting off. However, the most beneficial aspect of this community swap-meet is that it creates a safe space for bonding and communication in the community. When trading items, the items themselves are conversation starters that help members of the community to tell each other stories and get to know each other better.
Whatever you plan, make sure it spreads joy, even after the jolly season is over!
