By Cecilia Nasmith

The fifth annual Ferguson Family Community Christmas Dinner brought roughly 100 people into the Colborne Legion for free food and festive fellowship.

Darryl Ferguson gave the official welcome, with his sister Rhonda Cunningham asking the blessing and providing her own remarks.

“All of us coming together to enjoy this meal together, a traditional Christmas dinner, is a fine example of the Christmas spirit,” Cunningham said.

Though Darryl Ferguson started it and the family enthusiastically got on board, she continued, “the heart of the dinner really belongs to our mom Gail.

“Planning, shopping, cooking, making reservations, transporting the food – a lot of work has gone into making it, and there's nobody that embodies the Christmas spirit more than our mom.”

Holiday-hatted, colourfully dressed Fergusons dished out delicious home-made turkey, ham, stuffing, gravy, corn, turnips, squash, mashed potatoes and buns, with cranberry sauce and butter at each beautifully set table (which included a small box of Lindt chocolates at each place setting).

For those who saved enough room, a dessert table offered every conceivable kind of sweet treat, and Cunningham set out take-home bags for those who wanted to take some of the extras along with them.

A cart of drinks was pushed table to table to offer lemonade, cranberry juice, water and tomato juice. For those with a taste for something harder, the bar was open, with a special box handy to accept donations for the Colborne Legion food bank.

Taking a break following the meal, Gail Ferguson said she hears the thanks every year from people whose family members live too far away to visit and those who, for whatever reason, might otherwise have no Christmas plans. They only hosted 45 diners the first year they held the dinner, but the numbers have grown.

The dinner began as a gift to the community by a family who has lived in the Colborne area for many years and wanted to show its appreciation of how these people have always been there for them.

Gail Cunningham noted that the kind of dynamics that affect every family – young ones moving away, old ones retiring in other cities, various kinds of changes - are beginning to show in the Ferguson clan as well.

They had discussed discontinuing the dinners, she said, but so many people begged them not to. The answer is calling upon more volunteers outside the family.

That's nothing new, Ferguson said, as friends and supporters have always pitched in by bringing in things like desserts and cheese trays. One man donated a 20-lb. turkey, and family members were given a total of about $400 in cash donations toward the dinner.

“The Legion is so good to this community and so gracious to volunteer, giving us the room, and they were here this morning,” said Darryl Ferguson – a former member of the Canadian Armed Forces and a proud Legion member.

Setting out the donation box is the family's way of giving back to the Legion, and Gail Ferguson said they'd collected $2,990 for the food bank in the first four years of the dinner. This year, after an accounting of donations, Andrea Ferguson was able to announce they'd raised an additional $1,425 in the dinner's fifth year.