For the first time in 15 years, there won’t be a Christmas dinner served at St. James’ Anglican Church.
Due to COVID-19 restrictions, the church will instead be offering gift vouchers for a Swiss Chalet Festive Special dinner. While the annual community dinner is typically attended by about 150 guests, a lack of volunteers and the complications added by current COVID-19 restrictions made it impossible to organize and prepare the dinner in-person this year.
“It was just too difficult,” said Rosemary Freeman, outreach ministry co-ordinator at St. James’. “It wasn’t our first choice. Our congregation is getting older and it would be a risky position. After consulting with the health unit, we decided we couldn’t do it.”
The Community Foundation of Orillia and Area and some other, smaller donors provided funding for the dinner. That funding has been spent on the Swiss Chalet vouchers.
The church has been providing dinners to local homeless shelter residents since April, so many of the Christmas dinner vouchers will be going to the shelters. Freeman said most of the vouchers are spoken for at this point.
“The nice thing about the sit-down meal was that there was lots of camaraderie, with music and social chatter and a lovely meal. However, the best we could do was to provide the meal part this year,” she said.
“It’s different, like everything else is this year. In the best interest of continuing to at least feed people ... we had to go with that.”
