The end of the year is a good time to step back from our usual routines to celebrate family, friendship and community. Our challenge is to open the borders of those relationships to embrace those who spend their lives on the margins of our neighbourhoods.

Holidays are valuable opportunities to review our values and relationships. However, injustice and exploitation do not take holidays as the theme days of December remind us:

1 World AIDS Day
2 International Day for the Abolition of Slavery
3 International Day of Disabled Persons
5 International Volunteer Day
10 International Human Rights Day
18 International Migrants Day
25 Christmas Day
26 Boxing Day
29 International Day for Biological Diversity

Christmas Day and Boxing Day may seem unusual inclusions in a diary of “Just Dates”. However, the traditional Nativity story is rich with imagery of political manipulation, refugee flight and the irresistible power the story of a new birth holds for every time and every place.

Boxing Day is one of those holidays whose origins have been lost in history and mythology. There was a practice on Boxing Day when those with wealth would give gifts to their workers and the “boxes” in Churches would be open and money distributed to those in need. Those boxes can still be seen in many Churches and still provide funding for emergency relief. At this time of the year I like to believe that every small act of random kindness is a crack in the hard surface of exploitation.

In the midst of our holidays, gift giving and festivity, there will be homeless people on our streets, people seeking political asylum living behind wire in detention centres and calls from desperate and lonely people to agencies such as Lifeline the Salvos and Vinnies.

The structures that leave so many in situations of poverty will continue to cry out for our attention and action.

May our holidays and celebrations inspire us to live justly love tenderly and walk humbly o the earth!!!