GOOD CHEER SPREAD

Dominion, Volume 29, Issue 81, 30 December 1935, Page 3

GOOD CHEER SPREAD

i Christmas Activities Of Salvation Army Officers of the Salvation Army throughout the Dominion have spent a very busy Christmastide. Relief workers and other officers have continued to discover many evidences of social misery, infantile malnutrition, and in some cases' appalling house conditions. Major Florence Birks, women’s social secretary, said yesterday that at each of the Dominion’s relief centres. Christmas cheer has been distributed to approximately 900 persons. In Christchurch the relief, officers, in addition to assisting old-age pensioners and probationers, provided a high tea on Christmas night for women prisoners, and gave a Christmas party to hundreds of needy children. The territorial commander, Commissioner Adams, with Mrs. Adams and a party of visitors, attended all the banquets and parties. At the two homes for aged women —namely, Island Bay and Berhampore —the old people displayed the sheer joy of children, and delighted in recounting to visitors the memories of past days. At the Paulina Home some of the Army’s saddest cases are housed; nevertheless, the sympathy of au understanding staff made one and all forget their sorrows if but for a season. Here the officers had spent long hours decorating a rather “out size” so far as buildings are concerned, but the result was well worth while. At the Kensington Street Maternity Hospital the matron and her staff had transformed the old building into a fairy palace. Nurses flitting hither and thither in pale blue uniforms, 22 babies in white array, silver bells and beautiful blossoms, gave the impression of accompanying “Wendy” to the “never-neyer-never land.” Perhaps the happiest party of all, however, was the children’s festival, held on Christmas Eve at the Girls’ Home, Owen Street. From the time the commissioner with Mrs. Adams and party sat down to the meal, through the happy function which followed, and until Santa Claus had delivered the last parcel, there was not a dull second. The women’s social secretary desires to express thanks to all who have helped by generous gifts to give each inmate a happy Christmas.