Reading the BFP, and seeing the Christmas “spirit” rolling up to fever pitch, as we stride into a fury of over-spending, eating and drinking, I wonder, just a bit, about the other side of life.

Christmas is after all the west’s winter festival, assimilated by the Christian church as a celebration of the birth of Christ and of the new year.

We have been at it now for about two thousand years, and it is our nation’s church’s second most important festival of the year.

However, Christian or not, could we pause for thought for just one moment?

The Christmas school holidays will be on us in a week or so. Now I have just retired as a school governor, we had, in term time 8am breakfasts and hot midday meals, and then there were, for some, after school activities.

These were provided and for lower income families and households, they were free and in most cases managed by the school as an extra load to their normal paid days’ work.

But during the holidays these “services” are not provided. At this time of year most of us will come home to a well-stocked festive fridge, brimming with stuff.

However there are families in our town where the fridge will be empty, and the school holidays will be placing an additional burden on that badly stretched domestic budget and facilities for child management.

Down at the food bank, last month saw just under 1,000 food parcels packed in one month.

A large proportion were family packs, (and a lot of these are for working families). Most of the food bank stuff is given voluntarily, some top-ups and essentials are purchased with gift and grant money, but all the work is voluntary.

This is not a social service (although it seems to have become one) but a service provided and managed by volunteers. At the Parish Church on Tuesdays, another dedicated volunteer team provide a good cooked evening meal for needy all comers, and then there is Wycombe Homeless Connection, and the countless other local providers all working with one aim, to help those in our town who need help.

So please when you open that fridge to cram yet more stuff into it, think of the families, single parent family units and singles who open their fridges on Christmas day and find nothing.

There are collection boxes and distribution points all over Wycombe. They are in most large food shops, churches and other public places. If you can, please drop a tin or packet off.

Anthony Mealing, High Wycombe