Generosity can help us end the year on a high

We don’t really need to repeat that 2020 has been a hell of a year, and not in a good way. The pandemic has taken a toll in many ways - mentally, physically, emotionally and financially – and the fear remains that harsher times are to come. While we celebrate recent vaccine developments, we have a degree of trepidation about the state of the national finances as we start, as a country, to cover the cost of a stagnating economy, furlough, support grants and everything else. It’s going to be tough.

But if there is one thing that the year has taught us, it’s that kindness can go a long way.

The abiding memory of the warm locked-down spring for many will be how we looked out for one another. We delivered food parcels. We entertained our neighbours. We did what we could to make other people’s lives easier.

And that is why this year The News is running several Christmas appeals, rather than one as we traditionally do. We’ve signed up people to volunteer for Age UK Portsmouth and call a lonely elderly person on Christmas Day, and DBS checks are progressing on those who have kindly stepped forward. As you will have read this week, the Comfort and Joy appeal that provides supermarket vouchers for those in need is back with an expanded remit.

And today we lead the paper with QA’s Secret Santa appeal. Normally the hospital sees hundreds of gifts donated for inpatients over Christmas; this year, for obvious reasons, the hospital wants to reduce the number of objects coming in to reduce potential infection, so it has set up a cash appeal.

As chief executive Mark Cubbon says, initiatives like this do make a big difference. This year we have – absolutely correctly – clapped for carers and thanked the NHS many times. We repeat those thanks – and now ask you to help spread cheer to patients this Christmas.