First I must state that I dislike Christmas intensely and everything to do with it. ~thats why I always volunteer for duty or for an OOA - a married bloke with kids gets Christmas at home and I`ll get my time off later is my reasoning - and I feel it works fine for me (this is written from MPA as I speak).
I was on shift on Xmas day at Chivenor one day. I dressed as Santa and we flew myself and two sacks of pressies into the North Devon kiddies Hospice. When I saw all those kids I immediately found a huge lump in my throat. Those kids believed I was Santa - so Santa I was. I walked out of there with more pressies than I had taken in - cigars, bottles of booze, tins of biscuits and chocolates.
I was then winched down in front of Saunton Sands Hotel and waved to all the blue rinse brigade and was given 4 bottles of champers to put into my sack. We then flew around the villages and waved.
On Boxing Day my Father reminded me of the three stages of Father Christmas:
1. You believe in Father Christmas
2. You don`t believe in Father Christmas
3. You ARE Father Christmas
Despite my humbug about everything Christmas - landing at the Kiddies Hospice was actually very special and humbling and a huge personal privaledge. The amount of magic it must have generated for those kids was clearly evident.
To read how this was probably stopped this year (for whatever reason) is very sad indeed. A sad loss of
PR for SAR and a huge loss for the kids of that hospice. Sigh .......