I’m sure most of you are familiar with the poem by Clement Clarke known as ‘Twas The Night Before Christmas. There is always a special magic about Christmas Eve (especially for me, as it’s also my father’s birthday!) Well, we are not quite there yet, but rather frighteningly, it is now 66 days to the Goldthorpe Christmas Market, which will be on Friday 9th December from 4-8 p.m.
We, along with the other local churches, are hugely excited about this event. All the market stalls have been booked (one by Turner New Leaf, selling homemade chutneys and apple sauce, and well worth a visit!) and inside the GPCC building, we’ll be serving refreshments, selling Christmas decorations and crafts, sampling home baking and offering a Christmas present wrapping service (just bring your presents and we’ll wrap them for 50p per present!) All proceeds raised by ‘Churches Together’ will go towards the Salvation Army Christmas Appeal, helping local families. Last year we raised almost £500, which is an amazing amount, all thanks to people’s generosity and kindness.
A huge amount of behind-the-scenes work has to go on before then, however, to make this event happen! We are aiming to give out goody bags to every family who come into the building (based on last year’s numbers, that’s about 300 goody bags!) These will contain a glow stick (to provide light during the community carol service at 6 p.m. in the church car park), sweets and Christmas literature, along with news about carol services and church events throughout the Christmas period. As you can imagine, getting those bags ready will take some time – so if you have an hour or two to spare on Wednesday 23rd November (9-11 a.m.), please do come along and help with that!
We also need an army of willing volunteers on the day to help with the event. If you would like to make decorations/ craft things to sell, please let us know. Home baking is always popular and we also will need lots of people ready to serve refreshments (deluxe hot chocolates were especially popular last year!) Please see your church leader if you’d like to be involved in this in any way or contact me by email (contact@gpcchurch.co.uk).
Inside the building, we hope to have:
- refreshments
- home baking
- craft items
- craft activities
- activities & competitions for children
- Christmas present wrapping service
But to make all that happen, we need YOU!