Community Christmas dinners take on COVID-aware format
It’ll be a safety-conscious approach that’s taken to community Christmas meals this year in Atlantic Canada.
In any normal year, these community meals would be offered in a communal setting, where those in attendance would gather and dine together on Christmas Day. Due to COVID-19 restrictions that have been put in place across the East Coast as COVID-19 case numbers rise, organizers are making adjustments so those meals will be taken to go this year.
The pandemic has impacted each
East Coast province differently, but the approach will be largely the same as three separate Christmas dinner events in Prince Edward Island, Nova Scotia and Newfoundland and Labrador each serve takeaway dinners for the first time in line with COVID-19 public health guidelines.
But it’s an approach each organizer is happy to take if it means they can still help those in need of a meal and some company, even from six feet away, on Christmas Day.
“Christmas, to me, is about giving to others,” says Souris, P.E.I. Christmas dinner organizer Melvin Ford. “People are looking for this, saying they really need help this year. The need is there, and we’re going to meet it.”
Proceed with caution
Ford says he is waiting for final public health directives from the province to firm up whether pickups will be allowed alongside contactless deliveries as meals are handed out in Souris this year.
“The whole purpose of our dinner was to bring people together because we didn’t want people sitting home alone. But this year, with COVID-19, we’re adapted our approach and are waiting to hear how we will be moving forward,” says Ford.
It was a similar goal that drove
Jimmy Pratt Foundation founder Kathy LeGrow to start her Christmas Day meal in St. John’s, N.L. two decades ago. The meal has become the city’s main Christmas Day dinner for those in need and will shift to cold-plate takeaways handed out at the George Street
United Church gates this year.
It, too, awaits public health directives from its province on how to proceed.
“I wanted this to be the same as how Christmas dinner would work at my house,” says LeGrow. “When we started, we may have served about 30 people. Now, we’re expecting to serve up to 250 people.”
Hope Cottage in Halifax, N.S. is both a soup kitchen and Christmas Day dinner destination. Executive director Joe Morgan has been supplying meals in takeout containers instead of in-person sittings at every meal since March.
The organization will continue this approach up to and throughout the holiday season.
“We were hoping by Christmas we’d be able to sit people down again, but it’s going the other way,” he says.
A greater need this year
Morgan says the number of turkey takeaway meals will also be up this Christmas since the number of meals served Monday to Friday at the soup kitchen has increased, which he says is due to factors including the pandemic and Halifax’s affordable housing crisis.
“We’ve heard from clients who are living in tents because they’ve lost their room or apartment,” he says. “There are an awful lot of people on the street right now, and shelters have had to limit numbers due to COVID. This means more people than normal are falling through the cracks.”
Morgan is not alone in noticing a greater need this year. Ford says he and his team identified a similar increase in need as they canvassed the Souris area to assess how many deliveries to plan for this Christmas.
His team was receiving calls inquiring about dinner earlier than previous years, and a greater number of people have expressed interest in receiving food on Christmas Day. He estimates his team will serve upwards of 400 people this year - their largest number yet.
“Calls like that really strike quite a chord with us. The need is just overwhelming this year,” says Ford. “This makes you realize that there is an even bigger need out there than what you knew about.”
Adapting approaches
As their methods of serving food
shift this year, these events are also shifting how they deliver help, and to who. Hope Cottage, which Morgan says recently celebrated 50 years of serving its community, is now serving on days it would normally be closed.
“We have new clientele we’re keeping up to date on when Christmas takeout is happening, and are putting notices up to keep people informed,” says Morgan. “We’re also anticipating that we’ll be open January 1, even though we’re normally closed that day.”
LeGrow says her group is looking at expanding its Christmas Day offering to include food hampers to families who could use it to make meals at home, rather than coming to the church to pick up takeout, after identifying food insecurity within downtown St. John’s that they weren’t yet aware of.
“We’re thinking of this for families and the elderly - namely, people who have kitchens and would prepare the food themselves,” she says. “This time really has been a learning experience for us.”
Ford’s Souris supper has also shifted, with volunteers shifting to different roles, including overseeing contactless deliveries, as well as businesses who have volunteered to help cook turkeys to ensure the group is following established public health guidelines and able to deliver food to all who need it.
These Christmas Day takeout dinners are all examples of adapted approaches with the same goal: feeding those in need this holiday season.
“We have to face the reality that nothing is the same this year,” says Ford. “Things are different, but we’re still getting food to those who need it this year.”