Emmanuel Church in Spryfield prepared and distributed a record number of Christmas hampers this year, 64 in total. We have operated a Food Bank in Spryfield for many, many years, and one of our customs is to prepare a big hamper for our clients for Christmas. This includes turkey or chicken and all the fixings for Christmas dinner, plus bacon and eggs, cereal and many other items, ranging from canned soup to candy canes.
We also prepare gifts for all the children whose families will receive a hamper. This usually includes some clothing and a toy (or gift cards for the older kids). Usually we have about 25 kids but this year there were 58. We hang gift tags on our Advent wreath with the child’s gender, age and clothing size, plus sometimes a toy wish, and our parishioners take the tags and wrap and bring in the gifts. Even though we weren’t getting 58 people in church this year, the tags disappeared quickly, with some people phoning in requests for tags.
As the Rector of Emmanuel, I mostly leave the Food Bank operation to our very capable volunteers, coordinator, Liz Mahoney, and her team. We are affiliated with Feed NS and lately the coordinator’s job has included attending a lot of zoom meetings on the everchanging protocols around Covid. This usually involves quite a bit of head scratching and rearranging everything, but so far everyone has stayed safe.
To the credit of our volunteers, the Food Bank was only closed one week, at the very beginning of Covid, and reopened right away as soon as we had obtained masks, hand sanitizer and had a plan in place. There is a lot of food insecurity in Spryfield and we do our best, along with some other food banks, to meet people’s needs. We also have a number of community partners, including St. Augustine’s Anglican Church and the Knights of Columbus from Stella Maris, and others who collect and donate food and money to help out.
Each year at Christmas I get to help distribute the hampers and I always look forward to this. Our clients are always so grateful and often really surprised at how much is in the hampers. We have a number of new Canadians who are eager to share our cultural holidays and learn about them, even with the language barrier. One of our Syrian clients asked us this year if the hamper included a Christmas tree. That included some interesting sign language. But we always manage to communicate somehow.
It is such a joy to me that our church is doing this very valuable outreach. Such a joy to know that a lot of families could have a merry Christmas after all because of our work and that many children received nice gifts. Such a joy to be able to meet our clients and wish them a Merry Christmas or a Happy Holiday and make a happy connection with them. I sometimes think that being treated respectfully and lovingly by our volunteers is almost as valuable to them as the food itself.
I am proud of our volunteers and the work they do in our community on behalf of the church. There is really no better way to honour the Christ Child born in a poor family and forced to flee, than to help other poor families and refugees in his name. Helping with that is such a privilege and one of the high points of Christmas for me. I try to see Christ in each person who walks through the door and serving him in them brings me, and all our such joy.
