The annual Community Christmas Dinner sponsored by Flint House and the Cridland family will take place once again this year, bringing together volunteers across the community to give everyone a free holiday meal.
Stacey and Christine Cridland and their family are busy preparing to serve over 500 meals to members of the Fort Frances community this Christmas Eve. The family is marking their sixth year helping with the local tradition, dating back to a time when the meal was available as a sit-down dinner at Knox United Church.
“We’re already starting to prep, we have a full team, we’re lucky to have our staff on board helping us with it,” Stacey said.
“We have one more week of full business here at the restaurant and then it’s kind of all hands on deck to get prepared for Christmas dinner, but we’ve already started bringing in some of the food and ordering in some of the stuff.”
The family offers the meal for free, but monetary donations are welcome.
“The first year we did it we did accept food donations, but it was a lot more work. We were getting all different sized hams, different sized turkeys,” Stacey said.
“To juggle and cook everything was a lot harder. So it’s just easier to streamline it all through [bulk food distributor] Sysco. Then we do have a couple of businesses that donate in town, we’re lucky to have those.”
“I don’t know how many boxes of stuffing we opened that first year,” Christine said.
“Because of course everybody donated stuffing, it was great. But we can buy a big bag of stuffing from Sysco and it’s done in one shot.”
Anyone looking to donate by cheque can make cheques payable to Community Living and any donations can be dropped off at Flint House or Northwoods Gallery and Gifts.
Local businesses involved in helping out include Safeway which donates buns, Boston pizza donates takeout containers, M&M meats donates desserts, and Sysco also donates some hams.
Outside of food donations, Sight&Sound also donates the use of a cell phone which volunteers and those looking to receive a meal can call so the family don’t have to use their personal phones to coordinate the meal.
While they have many volunteers, between the Cridland and extended family, it never hurts to have a few more helping hands.
“We enjoy having volunteers, especially for the driving portion. The same handful of people do seem to pop up and want to help, and we want to let them help year after year, if they’re willing to,” Stacey said.
“But we are doing something a little bit different this year. We’re going to be prepping some stuff on Sunday the 21st. We’re going to be here in the restaurant prepping some things ahead of time. We do candy bags and desserts and stuff like that. So we are looking for some volunteers for that day to help us with that part of it.”
On Christmas Eve they tend to keep the group serving food small just to keep things organized and safe.
“When we do it on Christmas Eve inside the building, we kind of keep it small. I mean, it’s mostly our family. We have a couple close people might help and as well. But again, just because we’ve done it so many years now, we feel like having the same crew. It’s like we all get in here and we know what we’re doing. We just get to work,” Stacey said.
“So we don’t want to say, ‘No, we don’t want any other volunteers.’ But drivers are probably, [the biggest need] the day of. In-house, it’s kind of hectic in here, there is a lot going on.”
As they gather the orders and people requesting deliveries, orders will be grouped together so it’s convenient for the volunteer drivers to have most of their orders in reasonable proximity, which the sisters say their mom spends a good deal of time on.
“My mom is behind the scenes and does all of the organizing of where everyone’s going and groups all of the orders together,” Christine said.
“Once we get all of the addresses of where meals are going they all get grouped together.”
The meal includes ham, turkey, stuffing, potatoes, vegetables, gravy, a dessert, a bun, and a candy bag.
To order a free holiday meal for pickup or delivery, call 807-275-6671. Because of the coordination and food ordering required, the cutoff for orders is this coming Sunday, Dec. 21.
