‘It brings a tear to my eye every year’: Taking Christmas spirit to Melbourne’s streets

3 hours ago 2

For more than 20 years, Derek Glennie has worked in his own small way to spread joy and kindness to those doing it tough on Christmas Day. Now, it is becoming a family tradition.

It started as a way to occupy himself. In his early 20s, Glennie’s parents moved to Queensland. So he found himself with time to spare on Christmas Day before he would meet up with friends for a few drinks about 5pm.

Derek and Jackson Glennie in Melbourne’s CBD on Christmas Day.

He started wandering Melbourne’s CBD handing out beers and offering a friendly chat to whoever wanted to take up the offer. But he soon realised providing beer to people down on their luck was “counterproductive” and turned to distributing care packs instead.

“It was really just killing some time and doing what I thought was right for other people,” Glennie says.

Distributing care packs is now part of his Christmas ritual. Before sitting down to Christmas Day lunch with his own family, he loads up his car and hits the streets of Melbourne, giving out items including toiletries, socks, pillows, yoga mats and phone chargers.

But donating packages is only part of the joy.

“The other part is connecting with people and talking to them on a day when they could probably do with a bit of cheer.”

Recently, Glennie’s eight-year-old son, Jackson, has joined him for the Christmas Day excursion. This year Glennie estimates he has given away about $1000 worth of goods. He paid for most of them himself, although friends sometimes donate money so he can buy more packages.

The Glennies hard at work handing out packages.

Glennie, a secondary school teacher, says his son is learning important lessons about kindness and understanding through their Christmas tradition. Conversations with people struggling with poverty are particularly meaningful, he says. This year there were “pearls of wisdom” from one grateful recipient who urged Jackson to always listen to his father.

“It brings a tear to my eye every year,” Glennie says. “I’m choking up now just talking about it. It’s so important to me that my kid experiences things like that and grows up to be someone who looks beyond the exterior of people that he walks past on the street.”

One measure of homelessness, known as the “By-Name list”, which keeps track of every person sleeping rough in a community with whom support services have had contact, found there were 180 people experiencing various forms of homelessness in the City of Melbourne in October.

Father and son handed out hundreds of dollars in items including toiletries, clothing and chargers.

Glennie also has a five-year-old daughter who is raring to join her father and older brother in handing out packages on Christmas Day. He expects she will be ready to next year.

Glennie and his son spend months preparing for their Christmas Day outing. He says it provides an opportunity to talk about the importance of kindness and compassion.

“It doesn’t matter what you do for a job. They should be the true measures of success. I want my kids to grow up to be emotionally successful.”

Jackson must wait until the morning’s work is done before going home to receive his own presents. But Glennie says opening gifts takes on a new meaning after spending the morning playing their small part alleviating disadvantage.

“When you start out with some sobering moments, it makes everything a bit more joyous after that.”

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