Christmas 2020 has given all Rotary Clubs the opportunity to think “outside the box” in the way we spread some happiness amongst the children and in many cases to adults too at this special time of year!

At New Mills Marple and District we planned early on how we would go about bringing Father Christmas to our communities in this new Covid environment. We too decided that we would concentrate in taking our Santa Sleigh around the usual routes, but as we were unable to knock on doors to collect, we didn’t need as many volunteers each evening.

This gave us the ability to extend our routes and add more evenings to our already extensive coverage.

In an endeavour not to miss completely on fund raising, the daughter of one of our members set up “Just Giving” and “Facebook” pages showing the dates, times and routes for each evening.

We were delighted that the “Just Giving” page proved successful as some of the feedback posted on the page shows:

Thank you so much for this, my little boy loved seeing Santa.
Thank you our 4 year old loved seeing Santa

Go on Santa. Great to see you back again

Thank you. My grandson absolutely loved seeing father christmas ☃️🎄

Thank you.... we loved seeing Father Christmas. So many people came outside to watch... it was lovely!

Thank you so much for helping to spread a little happiness in Disley.

Huge thanks for spreading Christmas Cheer to our family this year.

Thank you for a lovely Christmas magic
Maybe this is the way forward for the future.