What inspires Belfast Black Santa?

Thursday January 2nd 2025

Teamwork: Braving the gales and rain and joining Dean Stephen Forde on December 21, were Jack Wilson (Master of Music taking a break from the organ console), Rev Cameron Mack, Cathedral Curate, and Lay Reader Gillian McGaughey.

Belfast Cathedral’s Black Santa Sit-out is over for another year. The charitable tradition, established by Dean Sammy Crooks in 1976, once again attracted great support from the city and beyond.

The monies, which will be donated to local charities at the Good Samaritans’ Service on February 2, are still being counted, and with the promise of a generous donation from the Belfast Charitable Society to mark its 250^th anniversary, Dean Stephen Forde is hoping that last year’s total of £171,000 may be exceeded.

What is it all about, what drives the Dean to stand in the elements in Donegall Street for more than a week at one of the busiest times of the year for the Cathedral?

Dean Forde’s Black Santa Diary – published daily by the Belfast Telegraph – a gesture of support the paper has offered for a number of years – gives an excellent insight into the ethos of Black Santa and the amazing work done by the charities its supports.

We share the Dean’s Diary here – if you missed it in the Belfast Telegraph in print or online, it is well worth reading.

Dean Stephen Forde’s Black Santa Diary – December 16-24 2024.

Monday December 16

With nine days to go until Christmas, it’s that time in the year when I, as Dean of Belfast, search out the thermal layers and thick warm socks to take up my role of Belfast’s ‘Black Santa’.

This will be my seventh year to stand on the steps of St Anne’s Cathedral as Black Santa, carrying on a 48-year tradition which was begun in 1976 by Dean Sammy Crooks.

As always, every pound received, whether donated in coins, cash or by card, will be given away again at the start of February to each of those charities which have applied to the 2024 appeal.

Last year’s appeal raised a spectacular £171,000. Can we raise £180,000 this year?

Preparations for this first day of the 2024 sit-out began many months ago. Ten charities, which received an award last year, were helped to make a short video about their amazing work, meeting needs across NI. The videos can be viewed on the dedicated Belfast Black Santa website at www.belfastblacksanta.org/charities.

We have also replenished our supply of special Black Santa beanie hats, which will on sale from the Cathedral’s shop. And Black Santa has even had his portrait painted as one of the ‘characters’ of the Cathedral Quarter.

Tuesday December 17

Black Santa chatting with Lord Mayor Councillor Micky Murray on day one of the sit-out.

On Monday morning, standing on the steps of St Annes’ Cathedral, with my black cloak wrapped tight against a light rain, I knew that the Belfast Black Santa Sit-out for 2024 had begun in earnest. From now until Christmas Eve, my focus will be to reach that target of £180,000.

On the first day of the Sit-out, I always feel both expectation and apprehension. I love the opportunity to meet so many people who come to make their annual gift to the Black Santa Appeal. But I also wonder “Will we hit the target?” Times are tough. People don’t have a lot of money to spare. And yet the generosity of people always astounds me.

As this is my seventh year for the Sit-out, I know that the first day follows a certain pattern. Early in the morning there is a press call, and I find myself photographed from every angle! This year we have our brand new ‘tap machine’ which featured in many of the pictures. This allows people to donate to the Black Santa Appeal with a simple tap of their card. Many people no longer carry cash, so this will be an essential way for people to make their donations. Some will tap with their phone and some will use their watch. Black Santa has definitely entered the digital age.

It is always a pleasure to welcome the Mayor of Belfast to the first day of the Sit-out. This year Councillor Micky Murray made a donation and spent time with the Black Santa team.

And then there are the opportunities for television and newspaper interviews. It is no longer necessary for an interviewer to set up their camera. Everything can be done on a smartphone. And I am given time to explain the impact the Black Santa Awards can have for charities working in communities from Fermanagh and South Armagh, to Randalstown and the city of Belfast. Among these are charities working to prevent suicide or working to support those who have been trafficked to Northern Ireland and who have escaped from modern slavery.

The need across the charitable sector is almost without limit.

But I know that across the next nine days, through the generosity of the people of Belfast and beyond, much will be given in the spirit of Christmas, so that much more can be done across our communities in 2025.

Wednesday December 18

It’s not every day that you get your own personal weather forecast. But on Monday afternoon, well know UTV weather presenter Louise Small interviewed me for the television news on the first day of the Black Santa Sit-out. And she gave me my very own Black Santa weather forecast for Tuesday. “Cloudy but dry first thing, then rain moving in from mid-morning, heavy at times.”

Her forecast was perfect. The early morning was cloudy but dry. But by midday the rain was falling steadily on Black Santa and his helpers. Except that, with the warning of the weather forecast, Black Santa’s helper had erected a sturdy gazebo to keep Black Santa, his helpers and the new electronic card machine all dry from the elements.

With our shelter from the rain we were fortunate. But what of those who have been displaced by wars in such places as Sudan and Gaza? What happens when it rains heavily on those living in tents, or sheltering under flimsy tarpaulins of plastic sheeting?

In Africa’s newest country of South Sudan, thousands have fled from the horrors of a brutal war in the country of Sudan to the north. But South Sudan experienced unusually heavy rainfall this summer. The baked red earth turned to a sea of red mud. Tarpaulins and shelters made from grass, give protection from the sun, but not from heavy rain. And in Gaza the driving winter rains have soaked through tents and bedding and clothes.

What has this to do with Black Santa? It is because, through the agency of Christian Aid, a portion of the money collected for the Black Santa Appeal will be used across the globe, through local partner organisations, to provide better shelter against the winter rains and storms, and a way of surviving the seeping mud which is the winter reality of every refugee camp.

And what of those in our city or the towns of our province, who have no place to sleep, but out of doors in tonight’s rain and cold? What of those, who though skilled, have no work because they have no address to call home? In the rain, those local charities working to prevent homelessness, and working with those who find themselves homeless, they too will receive support from the Black Santa Appeal. Your Christmas generosity giving shelter from the rain, whenever it is forecast at the end of the News.

Thursday December 19

The Abbey Singers joined the Dean for some Carol singing on December 19.

Music is found at the heart of Christmas. For weeks, radio stations and shopping centres have been playing favourite Christmas carols that have everyone humming along. And over the past 10 days, primary school children across the country have been singing heartily, as the Nativity story has been told in a myriad of different ways. Then as the end of the school term draws nearer, it is the turn of those who are older to perfect their carols, accompanied by brass or strings, keyboard or organ.

Each day for this past week, as Black Santa on the steps of the Cathedral, I have watched the buses deliver pupils from different schools to practice for that evening’s Carol Service. And later, into the space that is this Cathedral, young voices sound the joy and the mystery of Christmas. These are carols and songs and music that will stay with them for the rest of their lives.

And once term has ended, there will Carol Services organised and held in churches small and large across the land. Until finally, on Christmas Eve itself, in cathedrals and community gatherings, there will be the Festivals of Nine Lessons and Carols.

There is a soundtrack to all of our lives. The songs that we sang with our friends. The music on the radio when our lives were shaped by significant events. The dance tune when we met the person with whom we would spend the rest of our lives.

It is why one of the charities which the Black Santa Appeal has supported this past year is so important. Live Music Now, brings together musicians from the worlds of Jazz, Pop, Traditional and Classical Music to ensure that live music is brought to those whose lives can be lifted by a tune, a song, or a performance. They perform in nursing homes. They perform in special schools. They might play in a hospice as people’s lives are drawing to an end. They will reawaken the songs and music that makes its way to the centre of our consciousness, when memory, or even words have faded.

The charities which the Black Santa Appeal supports touch every aspect of our lives. The support which the people of Belfast and far beyond give to Black Santa on the steps of St Anne’s Cathedral, will be music in the ears of all whose lives can be transformed by the help of others.

Friday December 20

Belfast is a city that was built around the trading activities its great seaport. However, there was one trade which never, ever, passed through the port of Belfast. That is the slave trade, where fortunes were made and other cities financed. In large part this was due to the courageous stand taken by one man, and the circle of abolitionist women and men around him.

Thomas McCabe was a goldsmith whose premises were in North Street. He was also a staunch member of the Rosemary Street Presbyterian congregation, and a founder member of the Belfast Charitable Society, which is 250 years old this year. However, it was the opposition of Thomas McCabe to the formation of any slave trading company in Belfast at a meeting held in the historic Assembly Rooms in 1786, which ensured that no such trade was ever permitted through Belfast. Famously, Thomas McCabe wrote “May God eternally damn the soul of the man who subscribes the first guinea” to such a venture.

But why is such a piece of Belfast history relevant to the 2024 Black Santa appeal, held on the steps of St Anne’s Cathedral? Because although no slave trade was established through Belfast in 1786, modern day slavery IS a reality in the lives of too many people in Northern Ireland today. From across the world people have been misled and trafficked into our country, to live an existence of enslavement. Some have been trafficked for the sex trade, others are in domestic servitude, others endure industrial scale exploitation, often at the hands of criminals.

Flourish NI is a local charity which courageously supports those who have been freed from modern day slavery in Northern Ireland, and Flourish NI is one of the 120 local charities supported this year by your donations to the Black Santa Appeal. Flourish NI staff work intensively through trauma therapy programmes to help those whose lives and freedom was stolen from them, to begin to rebuild their lives and their trust in humanity.

Your support for Black Santa, standing in the rain of Donegall Street, is support for those who have experienced the destructive reality of enslavement. The work and principles of Thomas McCabe and his fellow abolitionists at the end of the eighteenth century is a work still needed for our world and in our day – work that is facilitated by the 2024 Black Santa Appeal.

Monday December 23

Why does being Belfast’s fifth Black Santa matter so much to me as the current Dean of St Anne’s Cathedral?

The answer to this questions lies in two answers. Firstly, the esteem with which the people of this province hold the Black Santa Appeal. Some people carry on a tradition of giving which was begun by their late father or mother. It is a very special way of remembering.

A donation from the MG Owners’ Club.

Today parents out shopping will bring their children to give jars filled with pennies or pounds to place in the Black Santa barrel. Belfast offices will have a “whip round” from all their staff to add to Black Santa’s total. The local MG Owners Club polished their cars to drive to the Cathedral and make their donation. And from school Carol Services, with the Cathedral packed to the doors, the collection is given to the Black Santa Appeal. Then there were the eight football supporters from Ghent in Belgium, visiting Belfast for the Europa Conference League match against Larne. “What is this for?” they asked.

The importance of this 48-year-old tradition is to be found in that question from the Ghent football supporters.

The Black Santa Appeal is a channel for funds to some 120 amazing local charities which are too small to have their own fundraising departments. Charities like the Pepper John’s Memorial in Downpatrick. This small provides a community hub for local people who live with the experience of someone close who has taken their life by suicide. For such families, Christmas can be the hardest of times. But this is a charity with an ambition to ‘reduce suicide to zero.’ A small community charity with a massive ambition.

Or in Belfast, Redeeming our Communities is a charity which links a local church with their community, and offers a community shop selling great quality donated school uniforms. These are just two examples from some among the 120 local charities supported last year, demonstrating the range and passion given by volunteers in charities across the land.

It is for them that Black Santa works passionately in the days and weeks before Christmas, collecting online, and by cash or by card. But it all depends on the generosity of those people young and old who will make their donation, all the way up to Christmas Eve. Worth standing in the rain for!

Tuesday December 24

Today is Christmas Eve. It is the last day of the 2024 Sit-out. This is the day when Black Santa gives way to Red Santa, who will be giving out wished for gifts across the globe.

The tradition of Santa giving out gifts to those who do not expect them goes back to the origins of St Nicholas, the fourth century bishop of Myra in modern day Turkey.

For Belfast’s Black Santa, the 48-year tradition of giving away every penny that is received in the days before Christmas continues. It will be on the first Sunday in February 2025 that I have the immense privilege of giving away everything that has been donated by cash or by card. All the money raised will help some 100 smaller local Northern Ireland Charities do their work through 2025.

And this year, Black Santa received his own surprise present.

Black Santa, Dean Stephen Forde, is joined by CEO of Belfast Charitable Society, Paula Reynolds and Chair of Belfast Charitable Society, Professor Alastair Adair as they announce a significant donation to mark the 250th Anniversary of Clifton House.

On this day in 1774, Clifton House opened its doors to give shelter to the poorest people of the town that was Belfast. Then it was the rich merchants of Belfast whose Christmas giving ensured that Clifton House provided for those who had fallen on hard times, keeping them from starvation and from homelessness. Today the trustees of the Belfast Charitable Society continue that tradition. And in this, their 250^th anniversary year, they decided to make a very significant donation to the 2024 Black Santa Appeal. With this donation we hope to achieve the target we have set ourselves.

Giving generously. Across the days of the Sit-out, Black Santa has received bags of pennies and 20p pieces collected by children. Other people have dropped notes into the Black Santa barrel or whipped out their card to make a tap on the new card machine. Others have delivered the proceeds of an office table quiz, a charity fun run or have called with large donation from a supportive business.

For every donation that has been given to Belfast’s Black Santa, expressing the true nature of Christmas, I wish to express my sincere thanks to the people of Belfast and beyond. And to wish all the joy, peace and presence of this Christmas, most especially to all who will find this the most difficult day of the year. Thank you on behalf of every one of the over 100 charities who will receive their gift from Black Santa early in 2025.

Thank you and Merry Christmas.

You can still donate to the 2024 Black Santa Appeal.