Feeding the down and out
Published:Tuesday | December 28, 2010 | 12:00 AM
St Andrew family marks 24 years of providing Boxing Day meals to the needy
Laura Redpath, Senior Gleaner Writer
Yesterday's trek around the Corporate Area marked the 24th year that the Downer family has been feeding homeless people during the Christmas season.
The family, of at least 30 members, was up before the crack of dawn on Boxing Day preparing roughly 250 wholesome box lunches, which they packed in three vehicles and took to individuals living on the streets.
More than two decades ago, Noel Downer, his wife, Alice, and their eight children started a family tradition that blossomed into one that has been passed on to the next generation.
No matter where they are in the world, Noel and Alice's children, Paul, Goulda, Gaynor, Hayley, Phillip, Joel, Caren and Karl, take their families home to Jamaica at Christmas in order to carry on the tradition of charity.
"My home was like a dormitory," Noel reminisced, chuckling. "The children were all very smart and articulate and we thought of a way to organise them."
Every Saturday morning, the family gathered for devotion where everyone could vent, pray together and talk about what happened the week before. If there was a family dispute, this was the time to talk about it.
Saturday offerings
The Downers also started collecting offerings among themselves during these Saturday morning sessions.
"A lot of people used to come to our gate and beg and there were times when we had nothing to give," Noel said.
"So we took up an offering in case somebody came to beg."
The money they saved grew to a sizeable amount and so Noel asked the question everyone wanted answered.
"'What do we do with this money?' So we decided we needed to spend it on people below the radar," he told The Gleaner.
And so, two parents and their eight children, who were all adults by then, set out on Christmas Day of 1987. That year they fed 30 people.
"It climbed from 30 to 50 and then 75 and then to 100, then 150. Last year, we fed 234. The number just kept going up," Noel said.
Decided on boxing day
Alice noted that the family decided to carry out their tradition on Boxing Day instead of Christmas Day because they noticed that persons on the street were more likely to be shown charity on Christmas Day than Boxing Day.
The wind from yesterday's breezy Boxing Day was not enough to drown the peals of laughter from the close-knit family as they packed the box lunches into the back of the vehicles.
When her grandmother asked her last year to pen a letter explaining what the Boxing Day tradition meant to her, 11-year-old Kelly-Ann wrote: "It is my hope that when our grandparents and parents are passed away, we will pass this tradition on."
She added: "I was so happy to see how blessed we are to be doing this. But we can't do it all. I think people from other parishes should just join in, so everyone could have a merry, merry Christmas."