As we enter the holiday season and gather with family and friends to celebrate our many blessings, I am overjoyed with how chapters across the National Society embraced this year’s DAR Month of Service initiative.

A joint project of the Service to America, America 250!, and Commemorative Events committees, the DAR Month of Service began on September 11, 2026, to commemorate the 25th anniversary of the 9/11 terrorist attacks. The initiative ended October 11, 2026, the 136th anniversary of the National Society’s founding and the 11th annual DAR Day of Service. Your efforts to make a difference in your communities and honor the service of our Patriot ancestors demonstrated NSDAR’s vital contributions across all three of our mission areas:

Historic preservation: Daughters cleaned headstones, with one chapter even teaching a fifth and sixth grade football team how to properly and respectfully clean headstones! DAR members also cleaned up the grounds surrounding historic monuments, as well as transcribed documents at their local county historical museums.

Education: Chapters stuffed backpacks with food in partnership with Feeding America, donated needed school supplies (in one case, 1,800 pencils!), and sorted donated arts and crafts supplies at a nonprofit reuse center.

Patriotism: Daughters delivered goodies and notes of appreciation to first responders, wrote holiday cards for active-duty service members, and celebrated America 250! with residents at a local retirement home. Chapters prepared and delivered home-cooked meals to female veterans, helped set up transitional housing for homeless female veterans, and organized and repaired flags for veterans laid to rest at a national cemetery. Daughters even ran bingo games at the VA.

In other acts of vital community service, Daughters cleaned up litter along highways, created birthday cake kits, and coordinated and promoted blood drives.

No matter how your chapter chose to observe the DAR Month of Service, please remember to log your service hours in the Service to America online tally to ensure they count toward our goal of 17.76 million hours of service during the Storage Administration. You will find guidance on what counts as “Service to America” on the Service to America Committee webpage.

For almost 25 years, the National Society has welcomed the local community to our House Beautiful in December for a holiday open house, and we will do so again this year the evening of December 9. This year’s festivities will be a bit different due to the extensive ongoing renovation of the DAR Library, but it will still be a splendid occasion. Those who are not able to join us at Memorial Continental Hall may still enjoy the DAR period rooms in their Christmas finery by viewing the online exhibit “Songs of Christmas Past” from the DAR Museum. Eight classic Christmas carols are paired with photos of period rooms from the same era. Clicking through with a cup of warm apple cider or hot tea would be a perfect way to while away a pleasant afternoon this holiday season—much like pairing the latest issue of The Daughters’ Portico with your favorite hot beverage.

I wish you and your family and friends the happiest of holiday seasons. I am grateful to share in illuminating our DAR legacy with you. P