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All Newsletters : December 2002 : Christmas: A Time To Celebrate Hope

Christmas: A Time To Celebrate Hope
A message from C-BERS Chairperson, Maria Harries


This December newsletter brings with it Christmas greetings and well wishes to all our readers from the Management and Staff of C-BERS Services.

As it arrives in your mailbox, hopefully it will be one of a number of heartfelt Christmas well wishes extended to you and yours this year.

Traditionally, this is a time of year when most of us make a special effort, not only to acknowledge those to whom we feel closest, but also to extend the hand of friendship and goodwill to all humankind.
Christmas get togethers of friends and family offer an opportunity to share companionship, and often food, and to offer our wishes of love, appreciation and care.

To think that the historical origins of this time of celebration, sharing and goodwill date back to an event that occurred more than 2000 years is quite mind boggling.

If nothing else, the fact that these traditions are maintained to this day, gives us reason to hope that our care and concern for humanity will triumph over the ignorance and fears that lead us to harm each other.

It is this theme of “hope” that I want to reinforce in my C-BERS Christmas message this year.
In essence, Christmas celebrates the birth of a child, and the realized potential of who that child became.
As most parents would attest, the birth of a child, particularly a first born, is a momentous occasion.
Vested in that new life lies all the possibility of a future life well lived, but yet to unfold.

It could be said that the birth of any child symbolizes our own individual and collective hope that this child’s future may be better and brighter than that which we may have lived through ourselves. It embodies our heartfelt responsibility, as parents, and as a community, to do all within our power to make this possibility a reality.

Christmas then, is both a celebration of new life, and the possibility of a better life, founded in our love and care for each other.
This possibility is further reinforced in our willingness to embrace the start of a new year as a time for making resolutions for the future, many of which involve a letting go of those habits and practices that may have held us back in the past. Typically, our New Year’s Resolutions are forward looking, invariably positive, and usually characterized by a determination to do better.

These Christmas themes of love, care, hope and renewal could not be better illustrated than in the story of Tony Pavia’s relationship with his family which is featured in this newsletter.
Despite a less than happy childhood, first within his own family of origin in Malta, and subsequently as a child migrant in Australia, Tony resolved to create a better life for his own children and now, in latter life, has found a renewed lease of life in the regular care of his young grandchildren.
Tony’s story is indeed a story of hope, one that illustrates the true spirit of Christmas… reminding us all that the creation of a new and better life is always possible.


Maria Harries


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