Send a message to the people you love this Christmas with #HomeAtHeart
2020 has been a year where we have been asked to change that which comes most naturally to us: the human connection. We have gone from a nation of huggers and hand-holders, to emoting with our eyes from a distance of two metres.
It has been a year where many of us have been pushed to limits we didn’t know possible. Where we have had to find new ways of showing people that we love them, that we care. We have lined country roads in silence, watching funeral cortèges wind their way slowly past us.
We have written postcards to family members living nearby, but who feel oceans away. We have left packages of food on the doorsteps of those most vulnerable; who in normal circumstances would have been brought into our homes and given a spot at our kitchen tables.
We have had to dig deep as a society and find a way to express that sense of connection that makes us truly Irish. Through Zoom and FaceTime and phone calls instead of text messages, we have found new ways to communicate. We have sent gifts filled with sentimental trinkets to let our loved ones know that we are thinking of them. We have connected, despite the distance between us.
If there is one thing we have learned from this year, it’s the importance of telling the people that we love, just that.
This Christmas will be different to any other, that we know for sure. Will Granny be able to come for dinner? Can we meet our friends for a pint beside a roaring fire? Will I get home for Christmas?
When it’s all stripped back, and the things that we have taken for granted are not available to us anymore, what is left behind? Family. Friends. The people who we hold dearest in our hearts.
We at The Irish Examiner want to help you to connect with the people you love, but may not see, this Christmas. This is our #HomeAtHeart campaign.
Every week, in the weeks leading up to Christmas, we will publish as many of your messages as we can in print and online. Whatever you want to say to those you love this Christmas, you can say it here, in The Irish Examiner.
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