How Atlantic Canadians are staying connected at Christmas
- Judith Mendiolea Lelo de Larrea
- Apr 20
- 6 min read
Celebrating Christmas can take many different forms - it doesn't always involve being together with family.
By Judith Mendiolea
Originally Published by The Telegram Dec 08, 2025
From a quiet shelter kitchen in western P.E.I., to a soup kitchen in Charlottetown, to a military base in Oromocto, N.B., Christmas looks different this year for those who can’t be home with loved ones.
But across Atlantic Canada, in places where distance and duty often stand between families, small rituals of kindness and connection turn December into something that still feels like home.
A quiet Christmas in a shelter
For Jennika Resurreccion, this Christmas will be a quiet one.
“I’m still probably going to make a dinner that’s more elaborate than our normal dinner, but we’re probably going to have a chill night watching a Christmas movie, drinking hot chocolate, maybe a board game,” she says.
Resurreccion moved to P.E.I. from Guelph, Ont., in 2021 with her then-partner and three children. They alternate family visits each year, and this time, the distance feels softer.
“I think I like the balance of both,” she said. “I’m very used to being around bigger families. The noise doesn’t bother me; the kids playing don’t bother me. But it’s also nice to have a quiet Christmas. We don’t take that for granted.”
Resurreccion works at the Chief Mary Bernard Memorial Women’s Shelter on Lennox Island. Years ago, she stayed in one herself, a memory that still shapes how she spends her holidays.
“I have three kids to care for,” she said. “I had to take care of myself, but I couldn’t because I had to take care of them. Then this shelter worker came to knock on my door with presents for me. I felt like no one had ever cared for me like that before.
“That’s what’s pushing me to do this kind of work because I know how it feels to be a mom with no support on the Island at that time.”
Now, she helps create that same warmth for others.
“At the shelter, we decorate, we bake cookies, we make sure the women have a turkey dinner and gifts. We try to make it feel like home,” she said. “For some of the women, this is the only Christmas where someone cooks for them or gives them something.”
Her favourite tradition now is simple: “Something that we like doing is driving around looking at Christmas lights,” she said. “We bring cookies and hot chocolate in the car.”
For Resurreccion, home is less about geography and more about presence.
“I always believe that the grass is greener where you water it,” she said. “I make the most of it, whatever the situation is.”
The soup kitchen’s Christmas Eve
At the Upper Room Soup Kitchen in Charlottetown, the smell of simmering broth mixes with the hum of volunteers preparing for one of their busiest seasons.
“You see people struggling on a day-to-day basis, and you try to help them,” said manager Lorraine Goley. “But then you also realize that some people don’t really help themselves — that part is hard.”
Goley, who worked with the probation service and ran a catering business in England before moving to Canada, has been running the soup kitchen for seven years.
The centre provides two meals a day, seven days a week, and runs entirely on donations.
“We work strictly on donations here. If I need something, I put an appeal on Facebook, and people just come flooding in. The public are so generous,” she added.
“Everybody sees that everybody’s struggling right now, but they still find that inch to give. It amazes me every time.”
Until a few years ago, the soup kitchen opened every day of the year, including Christmas Day.
“We used to open 364 days of the year, even Christmas Day,” Goley said. “Before, I used to leave my family in bed and come here on Christmas Day. They’d be sitting there waiting to open their presents until I got home.”
That changed during the pandemic, when costs and attendance made the holiday dinner almost unsustainable. Now, the team hosts a full Christmas Eve meal and donates turkeys to a local family group called 4S Catering, which serves clients on Christmas Day.
“We make sure everybody gets a Christmas gift — toothpaste, soap, hats, gloves, chocolates, a Tim Hortons card,” she said. “It might be the only present they get.”
For Goley, closing on Christmas Day came with mixed feelings.
“When I wake up on Christmas morning, it’s a relief that I don’t have to come to work,” she said quietly. “I feel guilty saying that, but it is.”
Her children, she said, understood.
“A couple of times they came in and volunteered with me on Christmas Day,” she said. “So they were kind of with me.”
Now, she looks forward to spending time with her new grandson.
“It’ll be his first Christmas where he might know what’s going on,” she said.
Far from home, but never alone
Hundreds of kilometres away, in Oromocto, N.B., some families mark Christmas through screens and care packages instead of shared tables.
The New Brunswick Military Family Resource Centre (NBMFRC) works with families who spend the holidays separated by deployments or service postings.
“Our centre is actually closed during the holidays,” Andrea Gosselin from the NBMFRC communications team said in an email. “But we provide the military community with holiday programming and support during November and December.”
Last year, the centre supported more than 285 family members during deployment, hosted over 750 community members at events, and saw more than 3,500 youth drop into its programs.
In the weeks before Christmas, the centre becomes a hub of activity: from a Santa Breakfast to a Sensory-Friendly Santa visit, a night market, and Christmas movie nights. Families decorate cookies, paint ornaments and build Lego sets together before deployments begin.
“This is the first time we’re trying to host the Christmas Market later in the day,” Gosselin wrote. “We also wanted to host several larger events earlier to ensure that any deploying families could attend prior to departure.”
The MFRC also runs a morale mail station, helping families prepare and send care packages overseas, and distributes Overseas Ollie Bears, plush toys with recordable messages for children whose parents are deployed.
For some partners, the separation is hardest at this time of year.
“During the holidays, I find it hard that my boyfriend is away for the best time of the year,” wrote a military partner from Oromocto. “Without him by my side, I feel like someone is missing, his smile and the joys we never want to miss.”
Another partner echoed that sentiment.
“During the holiday season, when my boyfriend is deployed, it means both physical and mental distance for me,” she wrote. “I long to hug my boyfriend and wish him a Merry Christmas in person.”
Yet for many, events like the Santa Breakfast help ease that distance.
“It’s the first time I realized we were going to be okay living here after moving here,” one military spouse said.
Finding a home where you are
For Goley, it’s the families waiting around the dinner table.
For Resurreccion, it’s the women at the shelter, sharing turkey and laughter in a safe place.
For the military families in Oromocto, it’s the recorded voice inside a teddy bear or a pancake breakfast that reminds them they belong somewhere.
“Everybody keeps thanking me for the work I do,” Goley said. “But without the public, we couldn’t do any of it.”
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