Christmas Day has a way of cutting through the noise. After the rush, the deadlines, the worries and the long to-do lists, we’re left with something much quieter and much truer: a baby, born in vulnerability, hope wrapped in human skin, and a reminder that love so often enters the world not with fanfare, but with gentleness.
As I look back over the last 12 months at The Parish Trust, that feels deeply familiar. This year has been full. Full of hard work, long days, big decisions, unexpected challenges and moments where we’ve had to keep going even when we were tired. But it has also been full of people. Babies and parents finding support when they needed it most. Families fed with dignity. Young people given space to breathe. Those carrying grief reminded they are not alone. Volunteers turning up, again and again, quietly doing extraordinary things.
The Christmas story speaks straight into the heart of what we try to be as a charity. God choosing to enter the world in fragility, not power. Hope arriving not in a palace, but in a place of need. That shapes us. It reminds us that small acts matter, that presence matters, and that showing up with compassion can change lives.
As we look ahead to 2026, we do so with both realism and hope. We know the pressures on families, communities and charities are not going away. But we are committed to growing what we do sustainably, deepening our work with babies, children, young people and families, strengthening our wellbeing and bereavement support, and continuing to build spaces of care, connection and belonging across our community.
None of this happens on our own. If you have donated, volunteered, partnered with us, prayed for us, or simply cheered us on this year, I say “thank you”. You are part of this story and we are so glad of that!
This Christmas Day, my hope is that you find moments of peace, however your day looks, and that you know hope is not naïve or sentimental. It is resilient. It shows up. And it is still being born into the world.
“They will call him Emmanuel” (which means “God with us”). (Matthew 1:23)
From all of us at The Parish Trust, Merry Christmas.
