‘This is going to be a tough year’: Christmas Cheer gears up to help struggling families celebrate the season
The lights are up in downtown Sackville, the first Moonlight Madness is behind us, and craft fair season has started in earnest. The holidays are coming, and for many, that means a season when lower incomes and a lack of resources are more painful than usual.
Enter Christmas Cheer, a program run by the Sackville Community Association (SCA) for the past three decades, which provides grocery vouchers and gifts for Sackville households in need.
SCA treasurer John Higham describes the program as, “kind of the feeling of Christmas, where a community can help people who don’t have as much resources as others.” Higham says hundreds of current and former Sackville area residents support Christmas Cheer each year, with cash donations and/or gifts.
Hear John Higham on CHMA’s Tantramar Report here:
A donation box is set up at the Royal Bank downtown to collect cash and cheques, and the SCA website also accepts online donations. As a registered charity, the SCA can issue charitable tax receipts for those donations, when information is provided. For gifts, Higham says the group welcomes new items with a target age range specified. Gifts can be dropped off at the Sackville United Church downtown between noon and 4:30pm on Tuesdays and Thursdays. The last day to drop off gifts is December 9, 2022, but the SCA continues to receive cash donations throughout the year, and uses everything over and above what’s needed to run Christmas Cheer to support families the rest of the year.… Continue