What this 8-year-old Scots girl wants for Christmas should break your heart – Hayley Matthews

A girl has asked for warm pyjamas and bed socks through an anonymous scheme designed to help children living in poverty, writes Hayley Matthews.

What one young girl wants for Christmas is the ability to keep warm at night (Picture: Michael Gillen)

Girl – aged eight – warm pyjamas, bed socks and drawing stuff. These words along with a number are on a tag that sat on a Christmas tree in the Forge Shopping Centre in Glasgow.

I don’t know who the girl is but how heartbreaking that all a child wants for Christmas is warm PJs and socks. The picture of the tag popped up on my Facebook feed earlier in the week and it’s all I can think about.

So many are living in poverty and so many children and teenagers are in situations – due to no fault of their own – where they are living in foster care or in much worse conditions, and these children should not be forgotten.

Thankfully the tree in the Forge shopping centre is helping some children in need and apparently the staff in Primark, instead of a seceret Santa, are taking a tag off the tree and buying essentials and small gifts, asked for by the children.

All that identifies the child is a number and I suppose that’s the bit that got me the most. I appreciate that this is for identity protection however, that number is a child who is in a tough situation and needing comfort.

If I could have a house big enough to take in all the children who are in need of some love and a little tlc, I’d do it in a heartbeat.

It breaks my heart to think of any child going without and missing out, and even more so on Christmas Day.

So please if you can – take a tag from the tree in the Forge shopping centre if you’re through that way, or if there is anything in Edinburgh that is similar I’d love to be involved! It’s the least we can do.