Where there’s a Will there’s a way
CHARITY begins at home.We all know the familiar adage. No one wants to be a Mrs Jellyby – Dickens’ cautionary creation in Bleak House, a mother who leaves her brood of children in penury while waltzing off to start a mission in Africa. The question is: with children, how vividly should we paint a picture of poverty and suffering? It’s a tough one.
We don’t want to frighten our little ones with lurid tales of hypothermia and starvation. Nor do we want to make them feel such responsibility for the privation of others that they feel too guilty to tuck into their Quality Street and can’t enjoy scaling and unwrapping their mountain of presents.
Of course, we want our offspring to be empathetic. They must understand that just by living in this country they are among the most privileged humans on earth. Alongside gratitude for simply being born British, they must also appreciate that some of us are more equal than others. Children close by, maybe just a street or two away, will be waking up on Christmas morning in hostels and temporary accommodation.
Some parents will be relying on food banks or volunteer-funded meals to feed their families this Yuletide. Teachers all over this green and pleasant land will give breakfast to pupils who arrive at school hungry, pop their dirty clothes in the school washing machine, slip a piece of fruit into their satchels and do their level best to make up for deficiencies at home.
OUR kids need to know these things and it’s our job to teach them. Prince William and Kate have continued the late Princess Diana’s tradition of explaining that young people outside the Palace walls are living a very different kind of life. In the TV programme A Berry Royal Christmas, Wills confided that his mother took him to homeless charity The Passage and that the experience left an indelible impression on him.
On the way to school he makes sure to talk to Prince George, six, and Princess Charlotte, four, about the rough sleepers who line the route. “I talk about it. I explain why and they’re very interested,” he said. “They’re like: ‘why can’t they go home?’ My mother knew what she was doing.” It behoves all of us to imbue the next generation with the social consciousness that embodies the true spirit of Christmas.