Christingle talk minute talk for Christingle services and events

Transcription

1 Christingle talk 5-10 minute talk for Christingle services and events This talk has been designed for Christingle services with children and families, schools and youth groups. If you have been asked to speak prior to the Christingle service, please utilise one of our more generic talk scripts, but make sure you reference Christingle when making an ask. If the Christingle service is happening after Christmas or there are very few children at the service, please adapt this script accordingly. Talk length: 5-10 minutes You may wish to remove some parts of the talk if you only have 5 minutes to give it. You will need: a Christmas stocking, sack or pillow case images of a house, children s clothes, a school exercise book and food download these from plenty of leaflets and posters House Boxes and registration forms prayer sign up forms sweets these are good to hand out to any children who help during the talk.

2 Introduction Good morning, my name is <insert name> and I m here on behalf of The Children's Society. Thank you for inviting me to take part in your special Christingle service here at <insert church/school/venue name> and to tell you a little about The Children's Society and the children we help. Christmas is such an exciting time of year, with parties and celebrations, gatherings and gifts. Many of you would have written to Father Christmas to ask for the gifts you would like to find under your tree on Christmas morning. What have you asked for? Invite children to shout out the presents they would like to receive. Wow! They all sound like wonderful presents to receive! Who has been a good boy or girl, good enough to receive presents? Children will raise their hands. Excellent, I m sure you have! All these wonderful gifts do make it a very exciting time of year. It also makes it very expensive. In fact, Christmas is one of the most expensive times of year for many families because of the presents they want to buy their loved ones. Below are some examples of Christmas excess statistics which may help you emphasise the retail excess of Christmas (pick one or two). Christmas excess facts: Did you know that over the Christmas week, we will use 227,000 miles of Christmas wrapping paper that s enough to go round the world nine times. Last Christmas, one in six families borrowed money to pay for food, drinks and presents, with households borrowing an average of 654 per adult. That means for a family earning average wages, it took until June to pay off this debt. Last January saw a 71% increase in people requesting help with debt, as UK workers faced a 4.1bn debt mountain to pay-off in the New Year. The UK s total intended festive spend will be around 22.3 billion.

3 Opening Christmas gifts Now, I have a sack of presents here, a little like the sack that Father Christmas will be using on Christmas Eve to carry all your presents. These presents, however, are a bit different to those you shouted out to me earlier. I would like a volunteer to come up and pick a present out of the sack and show everyone, and then put it on the board/table/lectern/somewhere it can be seen. Items in the sack: a photo of a house a photo of children s clothes a photo of food a photo of an exercise book. Keep asking for volunteers to come and take a photo out of the sack until all photos have been placed somewhere visible. You may wish to include or substitute photos of other things in the above list. Case study These might seem like strange presents, but each one symbolises many of the things that children in poverty don t have for much of the year, even at Christmas. Go through each item and explain what it symbolises. A photo of a house this symbolises the fact that many people do not have affordable housing. Children s clothes this symbolises that many families do not have enough money to buy their children clothes. Food this symbolises the food that many families cannot afford to buy. Exercise book this symbolises school and the fact that the costs of school can be prohibitive to some families, for example the cost of school uniform. Share with the audience the story of Maya. You may like to read it word for word or adapt it for the audience.

4 One child who was affected in this way was a young girl called Maya. For the first six years of her life, she lived with her family in extreme poverty. Often, this meant going hungry because her family couldn t afford to pay for her school lunches. She also missed nursery and primary school a lot because her parents couldn t afford to put shoes on her feet. Because of this situation, Maya was noticeably underweight and her development had dramatically stalled. She couldn t read or write as well as other children and the level of her speech was below the rest of her class. One of the main reasons why Maya s family was trapped in poverty was that their landlord was also the employer of Maya s father. He paid an illegal low wage, harassed the family and threatened them with eviction. The family was vulnerable to the landlord s exploitation because they didn t know their rights or where they could receive support from. Thankfully, a teacher at Maya s school got in touch with the local social services because she was worried about Maya. This led to Maya s family being referred to a service run by The Children s Society. The charity s project workers then helped Maya and her family move into a new property. They also helped Maya s father find a new job. And they helped Maya s parents begin to receive the financial support they were entitled to. Although Maya s family still has some money worries today, Maya s situation has improved significantly. Now, she never misses school or goes hungry, and she smiles and laughs much more. This is the difference you can help The Children s Society make to the lives of children like Maya. Maya was one of the 3.7 million children living in poverty in the UK. Many of these children can only dream of the type of gifts you asked for this Christmas and simply hope to enjoy the everyday pleasures of being a child. For many of these families, either one or both

5 parents are working, but the cost of living is so high they are having to take out loans or use credit cards for everyday costs such as food and fuel bills. Six in 10 children living in poverty are in low-income working families. Maya is just one of the 15,000 children and young people that The Children s Society gave intensive support to last year. You may wish to add one or two of the following statistics about poverty here, depending on the age of the children in the audience: However, there are many more children like Maya in this country. For example: In 1978, around 14% of children lived in poverty. By 2012, that figure had risen to 27%. Today, over 3.7 million children in the UK are living in poverty, that s one in four. More than half of these children are in working families. By 2020 there are predicted to be over 4 million children growing up in poverty - that s enough to fill the Olympic stadium 50 times over. 2.9 million households with dependent children have struggled to pay their bills and credit commitments over the previous 12 months, putting them on the edge of failing into problem debt. Families trapped in problem debt are more than twice as likely to argue about money problems, leading to stress on family relationships and causing emotional distress for children. Around one quarter of children living in severe poverty live with a disabled adult. You may wish to look at specific statistics about problem debt in your local area before your talk you can find these on our interactive map here:

6 The Christingle message You re probably wondering what Maya, her family and all this talk of poverty has to do with this Christingle service. Can anyone guess what the link might be? Many of us know The Children s Society as the organisation behind Christingles but what we don t always realise is that The Children s Society uses the money raised at Christingle services to change lives like those of Maya and her parents. So when you look at your Christingle, don t just think of eating the sweets on it, but think about Maya and the hundreds of families just like hers who are helped by The Children s Society with the money raised through Christingles. For 46 years, churches and schools have been changing the stories of children in poverty through their Christingle services. The Children s Society first introduced Christingle to The Church of England in 1968, and it has since become one of the most popular events for families and communities in the church calendar. The story of Christingle If you re short on time, you may wish to leave this section out and skip to The Ask. I d like to share with you now the story of the first Christingle. A long time ago, in a land far away, the land of Moravia, lived a kind man. His name was John De Watteville and he was a Bishop. Bishop John spent his days telling everyone how much God loved them. He wanted to find a way to tell the children in his village about Jesus, and about God s promises. John prayed and prayed, asking God to give him a good idea. In time God answered his prayers and gave him a very good idea. Indeed it was such a good idea, that it is still used around the world and we are using it here today.

7 God inspired John to take an orange the next time he went to see the children in his village. He showed the children how round the orange was and full of goodness. He explained to the children that it was like the world that God had made big and round and full of goodness. Then John pressed four little sticks into the orange to be the four seasons of the year spring, summer, autumn and winter and onto the sticks he pushed some sweets and fruits and nuts. He explained to the children that these lovely things remind us of all the gifts God has given us in the world. Next John took a small candle and pushed it into the top of the orange. He told the children that the candle tells us that God sent his son, Jesus, to be the Light of the World to shine God s special light into all the places and hearts that were dark. Carefully he lit the candle so the children could see that God s light really does make a difference in our dark world. Finally John told the children that Jesus loved everyone so much that he died for us on the cross. John said that Jesus love [blood] stretched right round the world to include absolutely everybody. The minister gently wrapped a red ribbon round the orange to show Jesus love going round the world. The children were thrilled by his story. They begged John to tell them the story again and again, and they watched as he put the orange, sweets, candle and ribbon together. The bishop had made the first Christingle. The Ask The message of love and hope that Christingle represents permeates through all of the work of The Children s Society. We change children s stories, working towards a country where children are free from poverty. By joining in the Christingle celebrations, sharing children s stories and donating today, you too will be helping to change the stories of children in desperate need of our support. Last year, nearly 6,000 celebrations were held across the country raising a total of 1.2 million for the work of The Children s Society.

8 I know it's an expensive time of year for everybody but if you could dig deep and donate to our work generously today then you would be giving the valuable gift of helping The Children's Society protect vulnerable children and help families living in poverty this Christmas. Together we can be a light in the darkness, offering a glimpse of the light of Christ for children in poverty and be true witnesses of his hope and love in the world. Please make sure you hand in your collection candles and envelopes so that your donations can be included in the money raised from this service. Alternatively, you can text the word ORANGE to to make a 5 donation. You may also wish to show the Christingle video at this point, if you have the time and the technology available to do so. To download the video, please go to and click on the Christingle Resource Centre. Close and prayer Thank you for listening to me. I would like to end by asking you to join me in a prayer: Loving Lord, We pray for families like Maya s, who need help to change their lives. Help us to change the world. We pray for the people we know, those we might be able to help. Help us to change the world. We pray for the work of The Children s Society, that they might change lives. Help us to change the world. Amen.