I was interested in learning more about Boxing Day, traditionally celebrated the day after Christmas in the UK and Commonwealth nations.

Wikipedia says Boxing Day “is based on the tradition of giving gifts to the less fortunate members of society.” Thus, it’s a good day to read stories of Random Acts of Kindness at — where else? — The Random Acts of Kindness Home Page.

The site’s own story is intriguing. Site owner Duen Hsi Yen explains:

This site is dedicated to recognizing those beautiful, faceless, nameless people out there that do things that help out someone they don’t know, and never will.

Originally, this page was started in July of 1997 by Douglas W. Hull, when he was having a last walk with a dear friend of his. They were walking along the Portage river that divides Houghton from Hancock in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. While walking there together saying their goodbyes before he left her to seek his fame and fortune in Oulu, Finland, they came upon a small bottle, it just looked like a salt shaker, but they picked it up anyway. Upon closer inspection, they discovered that there was a message in the bottle. Just a little missive sent from one person to another, randomly.

Doug thought that he might like to tell people about the wonderful message that he had found. The Web seemed the perfect place for such a story. He had hoped that somebody had already created a Random Acts of Kindness home page. He searched but found none. His philosophy about the Web has been that if you are trying to find a page on a certain subject and you can not find one, it is somehow your duty to create one. Well, that’s how it got started!

Now Doug is very busy and so he indicated on his website that he did not have the time to maintain it and would someone out there please adopt the site. Then, in May 1999, while doing a search on “kindness,” I stumbled onto his website. It was love at first sight, and so I did my own Random Act of Kindness, sending him a note via email that I wished to adopt his site. He wrote back, indicating he didn’t want to give the site to just anyone, and had a whole list of questions to ask of me. Fortunately, practically all his questions were already answered by webpages that I had previously posted on my Malama website. So folks, that is how it got here.

The stories on the site are categorized by topic, and they seem to represent acts performed by the writer, acts performed to benefit the writer, and acts that the writer has observed. Most stories seem to appear anonymously. Once you are reading a story, you can continue reading the next story in the queue by simply clicking a “next story” button. Here’s one that I found both touching and seasonal:

While living in New York some years ago I found out that there were thousands of letters addressed to Santa Claus North Pole at the Main Post Office in Manhattan. I was curious so I went and looked at some. Most of them were lists of toys that children wanted. But among the letters, I came upon a number that were so sad they made me cry. So I sent each child a telegram “Will be at your house. Wait for me. Santa”.

My wife made me a costume and I showed up. It was so wonderful that I did it for the next twelve years. I then moved to California. Some years ago I wrote the story for friends, I just called it “A Christmas Story” and somehow, the story had its own wings and went everywhere. Although I can’t make children happy any more I find that my story makes people feel good. How lucky can you get?