Every Christmas the Bill Crews Foundation brings together people from all walks of life for a festive feast. It's been a challenging year with more people seeking help due to the rising cost of living. The Reverend Bill Crews says a high prevalence of loneliness has seen more people participating in the event.
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00:00There's thousands here already, they've been queuing up since before 7pm and we're just
00:07starting to open the gates to let people in, but they'll have a free hot traditional Christmas
00:13lunch with all the trimmings, all of that.
00:16We've got Santa's toy shop, the church has been turned into a Santa's cave and all the
00:22kids will get a present, the adults will get presents, all of that.
00:26We gave out all the hampers to the regular people, so it's a big community celebration
00:32and what's amazing is the number of lonely people who are turning up this year.
00:38Just lonely, just isolated.
00:41And I say to them, you've got to get out and talk to your neighbours, you know, but we're
00:44becoming increasingly a lonely society.
00:48Yeah, loneliness has been something we've been talking about a bit in the lead up to
00:53Christmas this year, so how important are community events like this, do you think?
00:59Incredibly important.
01:00Incredibly.
01:01We've been kind of bashed by COVID and the financial crisis and we're overwhelmed, you
01:08know, and we're a communal people, so we need other people in our lives to kind of realise
01:17we're alive ourselves, so that's how we find one another, in community.
01:23They say it takes a whole village to bring up a child, but it takes a whole village for
01:28a human being to discover themselves.
01:30Reverend, you've been running this for a little while now, is there anything different about
01:36this year's event?
01:39Just a bit more desperate and a bit more multicultural, or a lot more multicultural than it's been.
01:46In the past, most of our volunteers have been kind of wealthy or well-off retirees, but
01:53now we get people from every nation and every religion as well, and it's just a wonderful
01:59thing, and a lot of the volunteers are as lonely as the guests who come, so it's a good
02:04way for people to learn about one another across the boundaries.
02:09Absolutely.
02:11And just finally, Reverend, before we let you go, can you tell us what does Christmas
02:15mean to you?
02:18Christmas means to me that when you least expect it, from whom you least expect it,
02:25and where you least expect it, change comes.
02:29Change comes.
02:30It doesn't come from the powers that be, it doesn't come from the business leaders and
02:34all of that, it comes from the people who have nothing.
02:37That's where real change comes in the world, and you kind of see it in the life of Jesus,
02:44that he was born in the back blocks of the Roman Empire, somewhere nobody had even heard
02:48about, in a family nobody had heard about.
02:52And change comes from where you least expect it, so always be ready to change.