Your generosity has given children a Christmas to remember

Editorial: Just two weeks ago we appealed to you, our readers, to help us provide 500 new beds and mattresses. You answered our call – and then some – helping to raise £145,000

A child wakes up to find presents on a new bed at Christmas, delivered by Zarach (William Lailey SWNS)

Among some rather more notable and ancient traditions, Christmas has become a moment for our political leaders to stand in front of a twinkly tree and deliver some words of stunning, interchangeable, if well-meaning, banality.

Who could easily say, for example, which of Rishi Sunak, Keir Starmer or Ed Davey informed us that: “Christmas is a time of peace, joy, compassion, a time of hope and promise of a better world”? Or that “for me, the message of Christmas is for us to treat others as we would wish to be treated, and the symbol of Christmas is light – the light of hope, in the darkest week of the year. Hope that we all desperately need for these most challenging of times”? Or chose to praise the “generosity of churches and charities, providing a safe haven and support for those less fortunate, and for those for whom Christmas is a difficult time”?

The answer, in this impromptu Christmas quiz, is Sunak, Davey and Starmer respectively. Only Humza Yousaf, first minister of Scotland, in his piece to camera, could not resist injecting a little controversy into a generally unexceptional address: “My prayer this Christmas is for peace and an immediate ceasefire in Gaza.”