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Thousands turn up at Christmas lunches

For the past 11 years, the Moulds family have celebrated Christmas day with other people. This year, the other folk numbered more than 1200 guests at the annual Salvation Army lunch at the Eveleigh CarriageWorks in inner-Sydney's Redfern reports ninemsn on 25 December 2009.
 
Moulds family
The Moulds family (pic) has hosted over 1,000 people at the annual Salvation Army lunch in Sydney.
 

Husband and wife Salvos, captains Paul and Robbin Moulds, and their children Nathan and Sarah, have seen the event steadily increase from the 250 people at the initial lunch 11 years ago.

"I thought that was crazy," Ms Moulds said.

This year, she estimated that at least 1,300 turned up for the lunch, carols, karaoke and presents, while 250 volunteers ensured everything went smoothly.

The guests were a mixture of poor and marginalised people who don't have a lot of money, as well as others who are socially isolated.

"The spirit of Christmas is definitely here. It's nice for people to have a place to go," said Mr Moulds.

Organising the event could be "very, very stressful", with everything from food to presents being donated, he said.

White and blue balloons decorated the tables where people of many nationalities chatted to each other.

Jacques Gonthier, a 76-year-old French Italian, sat with Nitsh Barua, 50, from Bangladesh, who became an Australian citizen last year.

They smiled and nodded across the table at husband and wife, Xisen Zhang, 82, and Baoquan Zhang, 80, from China.

It was Mr Gonthier's seventh lunch with the Salvos, where he always meets new and old friends.

"I've been divorced for 15 years and I like to meet new people," he said.

"I don't come for the food. I can cook meals at home. But I like to meet people, it's so relaxed."

On his first visit, Mr Barua was impressed, saying "everyone is cordially accepted" and people were not worried about what religion someone was just that they were human beings.

"I am very happy here," he said.

Meanwhile, the Rev Bill Crews said The Exodus Foundation had catered for at lest 3,000 people at this year's 24th free Christmas lunch at Ashfield.

"People started coming here at 6am," he said.

"We had to start the meals earlier because of the sea of people queuing all up the road."

Pastor of The Wayside Chapel, Rev Graham Long, said everyone "had a ball" at the annual Christmas Day street party at Potts Point.

"We had street people dancing in the street," he said.

Putting this down to a "particularly good DJ", he said people he usually only saw sitting in a "sullen state" on the footpath, were up dancing.

He said they catered for around 1000 people.

The Wesley Mission says there has been a significant shift in the type of people seeking help this year, for many because of the global financial crisis.

"We are seeing people slip into places perhaps they did not expect and this Christmas is particularly tough for some people and some families who don't have what they usually have to celebrate Christmas," a Wesley Mission spokesman told Sky News on Friday.

Source: http://news.ninemsn.com.au/article.aspx?id=987780