Fiona Duff: Help to do some good this Christmas

For 11 months we watch our diets for fear of putting on a pound, then go out for three-course lunches which cost double the amount in December than the rest of the year.

Having worried about paying the mortgage and other essentials, we splash out on gifts with no particular use for people we don’t particularly like (that’s just the family). And I won’t even bother mentioning the amount of alcohol consumed.

However, we all know that we are lucky. Around the world there are people who have no home in which to put up a Christmas tree, no dining table around which they can sit and eat turkey.

I’ve seen so many heartbreaking reports recently about how conflict tears apart the lives of so many. There are children who don’t care about writing a letter to Santa because they have been orphaned and are literally starving to death, while around them idiots with guns think that life is cheap when you have a ‘cause’.

So I’m going to spend one evening doing something to help in a very small way. On Tuesday, Firefly International are holding their first Scottish fundraising event in St Andrew Square.

Firefly is a charity that proactively helps refugees, at present much of their work is with Syrian refugees. One project is in the Turkish city of Antakya where there are around 200,000 refugees.

Of course, many of these are children and while staying alive, safe and warm are priorities, they will, we hope, have the rest of their lives to lead and need to be prepared.

Firefly is setting up a youth education centre where they can learn to be reintegrated into school life.

So, no doubt there will be food and drink as well as chat and laughter, but by buying a ticket I know that I have done something good this Christmas.

To donate, visit https://fireflyinternational.org/