Richard Dawson, 17 November 2015

I wonder how you’re feeling about Christmas. I hope you’re feeling a sense of anticipation and joy but I suspect that for many of us this will be mixed at the very least with a sense of weariness, perhaps even dread at the thought of all the work needed to enable the family to enjoy the day or of the pressure to buy something for everyone. Of course we can change the rules around this in our own families and decide to buy collectively or to buy only a certain number of presents and this is a great idea. However this assumes that you have money enough even to make these sort of decisions. What would it feel like to simply have no resources available to buy presents or even to buy Christmas food? The fact of the matter is that a lot of people in Dunedin will be in this position and no matter what pressure we might feel from or around Christmas it’s just got to be a whole lot worse if we haven’t got the resources to make any real choices around Christmas doesn't it? I wonder what we might be able to do about this at Leith? I wonder whether we might be able to make a real difference for at least some of the people I’m talking about? Before we commit to feeding our own perhaps we could think about those around us who can’t commit to anything for their families or children. There are a number of different venues for giving the food bank at PSO being perhaps the easiest to access. I think they also take toys for distribution to poorer families as well. Let’s also not forget our closer neighbours. Do we live next to a solo mum or a widow or widower? Do we have someone in our neighbourhood who may not have family around to do Christmas with. Could we offer to have them with us for Christmas dinner and so welcome in the Christ-child in this way. Christmas should be better for so many don’t you think?