Dr Mary Dawson: Trust not banning Christmas

Auckland CBD Farmers Santa Parade 2014. Photo / Michael Craig

The ARMS Trust is not doing away with Christmas, not banning Christmas, not rejecting Christianity, and not avoiding the word Christmas!

Auckland is, by definition, "super diverse" with 160 languages spoken, 44 per cent of Aucklanders born overseas, and a wide range of faiths practised.

As an organisation working to support migrants, former refugees, and ethnic communities, the vision of the Auckland Regional Migrant Services (or ARMS for short) is "A diverse inclusive and vibrant Auckland, with thriving communities making positive valued contributions".

One of our key goals is to provide opportunities to help new Aucklanders to integrate into society and their local communities, and our social events are multi-ethnic - all are welcome.

For any cultural or religious celebration, whether Christmas, Diwali, Eid or Matariki, our multicultural staff use appropriate greetings and celebrate, for example, by bringing Diwali sweets to share, or handing out chocolate eggs at Easter.

As this letter is written, our multi-faith staff and volunteers are wrapping Christmas presents for our Safari Multicultural Playgroup children, as is our practice every year.

We see value in acknowledging that not everyone celebrates Christmas and so use greetings such as "happy holidays" or "season's greetings".

These are perfectly acceptable messages used on many greeting cards sent before Christmas and our summer holidays.

In our daily experience, new migrants love New Zealand, our people, the great outdoors, enjoy our traditional customs, and are right there with home-grown Kiwis cheering on the All Blacks.

However, our ARMS clients are from many faith backgrounds just as home-grown Kiwis are, so we respectfully say there is space for us all. For the record, over half of New Zealanders identify themselves as being Christian.

In recent years, there has been a significant increase in people whose religion is non-Christian. Approximately one-third of the population indicate they don't have a religion.

To those who celebrate Christmas, we wish you a very happy Christmas. To those who do not, "season's greetings".

As Dame Susan Devoy rightly said, ARMS works hard to be inclusive and this is an example of that.

Dr Mary Dawson is the chief executive of ARMS Trust