By Kendall Worth
As I illustrated in this article, celebrating Thanksgiving 2024 came at an estimated total cost of $20,353.00 for 1,316 Homeless people and many more housed people alike to celebrate Thanksgiving. Many people, living in poverty, whom I talk to these days, tell me that they do not even want to think about how much it is going to cost them to celebrate Christmas this year. After celebrating Thanksgiving, we realized it ended up being more expensive this year, than in previous years, especially because Christmas comes with a longer period of time for celebrating, than Thanksgiving does. The depressed feeling of living on Income Assistance stays with Income Assistance Recipients throughout the whole month of December. Christmas effects Income Assistance Recipients on the mental health, as well as on the financial side. This year, if there are any organizations putting on Christmas dinners for people who are alone, nothing is advertised as of yet.
Some Income Assistance Recipients these days are saying that we will never see again that $250.00 one-time payment, income assistance recipients received in December 2022. It is believed that the Tim Houston government did this in 2022 because people were readjusting to normal life following COVID-19. On one positive note, this year (2024) is the first year that people are not even thinking about COVID at Christmas. There is a lot of sadness this year (at least, how things are looking so far. Considering Christmas is still a week away, this could change, but very unlikely) But in 2022 receiving this one time payment helped a lot. One piece of reality is this payment did not repeat itself in 2023.
The combination of COVID, followed by out of control inflation, paved the way and set the stage for the future in what is suspected to be how Income Assistance Recipients are going to celebrate Christmas moving forward.
Since I started my Journalism in 2013 https://nsadvocate.org/tag/christmas/ I have reported many times on how Christmas, even before COVID and out of Control Inflation, Christmas has never been the same for Income Assistance Recipients. This is why I continue to report on Christmas https://worthmatters.blogspot.com/search/label/christmas and other Holidays on my BLOG. Some Income Assistance Recipients I spoke to recently are telling me that they are ready for yet another Christmas where they will not be spending it with family or friends. Besides celebrating Christmas being expensive, and mentally deteriorating, and beside having access to food at Christmas time, are factors like:
- When your family, who want to see you at Christmas, live somewhere in Nova Scotia, but outside of HRM. The cost of travelling elsewhere in Nova Scotia by Maritime Bus or Shuttles has almost doubled in recent years.
- In some cases of people I advocate for, they kn ow if they are not able to tell their better off family members that they have got off of Income Assistance, the IA recipient will get stigma from family members in return.
- Mental Health Services and support that they can access at other times are not available over the holidays.
- Also, in come cases, welfare recipients complain that, because of their individual circumstances, they cannot respect the way they was brought in life over Christmas.
For this reason, some income assistance recipients who for instance, pre-covid used to travel to Cape Breton for Christmas, tell me they will not be going home to see family again this year. Some income assistance recipients report, that, being alone for Christmas was better for their mental health. They said they feel this way because when they used to go home to visit their families before COVID, not being able to tell their families that they are now working full time and that they made their way off Income Assistance has got them stigma from family in return. They give examples of invisible disabilities that appear to be misunderstood by their family members during stigmatizing conversations, including This Article which talked about Impulse Control Disorder and as This article which addresses learning Disabilities, and these are just 2 examples. As part of this stigma, they report that even trying to explain to their families, that they were diagnosed with these disabilities, after leaving home, is, getting them backlash in return.
I believe getting stigma at Christmas is uncalled for because Christmas should be the one time of year when things like whether you are rich or poor, or whether you have a full-time job, or not, should not matter. Christmas is supposed to be the time of year for Joy, Happiness, being generous and forgiveness. Sadly, there are people out there who do not treat Christmas this way.
Speaking of forgiveness I want to talk about something else that bothers the people I advocate for, at this time of year.
As I brought up in this post, some income assistance have had issues in their lives where they got accused of not respecting boundaries, and past friendships have ended for that reason. This post here gives a full description on what type of boundaries I mean. The post dated December 12th, 2024 brought this up as part of the case of why we need a Non-Professional Friendship Peer Support Service in Halifax. Growing up, many of us have been taught that December, and Christmas time, is supposed to be the time of year for forgiveness. Also, we have been taught that, in December you should make the effort to contact all of your past friends to let them know you are thinking of them. But the question is when as part of boundaries you are respecting, including your past friends telling you they do not want you contacting them anymore? This means even in December and at Christmas time you have to respect that you cannot contact people who told you to not contact them. These welfare recipients tell me that the fact that are respecting the boundary of not contacting people who told them to not contact them in December is affecting their mental health. It is affecting their mental health because they feel that respecting this boundary in December makes them feel like they have no choice but to have to show disrespect for the way they were raised in life.
Anyway the welfare recipient, Bob, I have talked about in the past came up with a coping strategy as to how he gets through December. He is dealing with the fact that over the past several years he has had a total of 12 friendships that have ended and that helps him deal with the fact that is not allowed to contact them. All 12 of these friendships have ended with Bob being accused of not respecting boundaries. Every December Bob gets together with a friend of his family who is a Church Pastor. Of course,just like professionals such as doctors, psychiatrists, social workers, and counsellors the Pastor reminds Bob of the importance of respecting that he cannot contact these people anymore. Anyway they say payer together once every December and that help Bob get through the month A-bit better with his mental health.
In closing want to say the best thing to do is have a Merry Christmas the best way we know how. Over this next week I will be investigating to see if there are going to be any Christmas Dinners and I will report on what I find out, in a post to come before Christmas.
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