Festive Cheer in the Dales

December 15, 2014

One of the highlights of the YDMT calendar is our Christingle craft session which we organise through our award-winning education and outreach programme ‘People and the DALES’. On a snowy December day we joined a group of Christian women from Malhamdale and Skipton in the Yorkshire Dales at the Quaker Meeting House in Airton. We welcomed a group of asylum seeker women currently living in Leeds and Bradford and spent the day together, enjoying each others company and learning about each others faiths, whilst making the Christingles for the service at St Michael’s in Kirkby Malham that evening. As the women arrived, the Dales were experiencing the first snow of winter which the children were enthralled with, jumping and playing in the white stuff. The group retreated to the warmth of the newly converted Quaker Meeting House Barn where soup was bubbling for lunch. Over 170 oranges were transformed into beautiful Christingles as women of different faiths, nationalities and ages chatted together. Somehow quite a few sweets didn’t make it onto their oranges, as young sticky fingers sneaked the dolly mixtures into their mouths!! Once the crates were busting with decorated oranges they were transferred down to the church ready for the service. That night, as the candle burned, we were reminded of our visitors who struggle to make a home here in the UK and also of those in West Africa who are unable to celebrate Christmas amid the Ebola epidemic. Our visitors came from a variety of backgrounds but had all been involved in the Maternity Stream of the City of Sanctuary. They are a group of volunteers who sought sanctuary and now work as Health Befrienders for the Refugee Council because they “don’t want other mums to suffer as they had”. The event was organised through the People and the DALES project which enables people who wouldn’t normally visit the countryside to get out into the Dales for fun, thought provoking activities. This is the third year that women in the Dales have welcomed visitors into our midst to make the Christingles. Each event has been full of warmth, happiness and fun. We have discovered that it doesn’t take much to welcome strangers into our midst and after spending time together part as friends.

You can read all about what the group thought of the day on their own blog here: http://www.cityofsanctuary.org/leeds/news