If buildings could talk – we can only imagine the memories we'd hear from the Christchurch City Mission's very treasured chapel in Hereford Street.

This historic wooden wonder beside the Mission's Hereford St headquarters will celebrate its 135th Christmas next month and it is still at the heart of how the Mission looks after our community.

In the weekend before Christmas Day, the chapel will be decorated and filled with presents, Father Christmas, several elves and they will bring joy to hundreds of happy excited young children who will receive gifts their parents could never afford to give them.

The City Mission has distributed presents to the city's children since its very beginnings. Now the chapel has become the distribution point and filling its old walls with the joy of children seems so right. Every Christmas, Christchurch people, organisations, schools, church groups donate presents to the City Mission to give to children facing a Christmas with nothing.

City Missioner, Corinne Haines remembers doing exactly that when she was a child.

"We used to bus into the city with big excitement to visit the Cathedral in the Square, with presents in hand to place under the tree, and to look with wonder at the Nativity Scene on display. It was a special time of choosing a present that we would like to receive ourselves, but that we would offer as a gift to those less fortunate than ourselves. I continued that routine that with my children in their early years."

The City Mission will find 500 children from among its regular clients – families it knows need this gift with parents who will be relieved their children can share in Christmas excitement like all the others. Presents for at least another 250 children will go out to other agencies around the city who have children who need some Christmas joy and depend on the Mission to help in this way.

This is just the latest chapter in the chapel’s long, long story but it might be one of the most heartwarming, its role moving from end of life to beginning of life.

The chapel is a Heritage listed building and was built in 1888 (in early English Gothic style) to serve as the Lower Heathcote Church of England Cemetery's funeral chapel, just in time to be consecrated before that year’s Christmas. Only a few blocks away the Jubilee Home in the St John's parish was also opened – this was for "the care and housing of the destitute and infirm" – an interesting coincidence given its home with us now.

In 1949, the chapel moved to the Jubilee Home where it was used for regular services as well as funeral services. In 1991, the chapel was moved to the City Mission site in Hereford Street and in 2014 it crossed the road to arrive at the present location next to the headquarters building.

Now it fulfils a spiritual role and a place where St Luke's Inner City Chaplain, Chris Orczy can connect with the City Mission community and where he plans to give regular Sunday services.

Of course, the presents for children are only a tiny part of the huge effort the City Mission will be making this Christmas to support the hardest hit individuals and families in our community.

The foodbank will go into overdrive during the last week before Christmas and will provide 1,800 special Christmas food parcels for our regular clients. This a huge task for us because in a regular week there are about 350 parcels supplied. In one week, we will give at least 6,000 people – many of them children – the food they wouldn't have for a Christmas celebration at home.

Meanwhile, our other services, our addiction counsellors, our social workers, our housing navigators, our community development workers, our financial mentors, our day programme staff, our emergency night shelter staff, our medical staff will give everything to support the people who come to us for help and who find the Christmas season so stressful, lonely and expensive.

On Christmas Day itself, up to 50 people living with us on our site will have Christmas dinner with us. They will be our guests in our men's and women's emergency shelters for homeless people, residents in our transitional housing building and in our live-in detox unit. They will be our family and know their community cares and that they belong.

If you would like to know more about the City Mission, or support it this Christmas, please visit at citymission.org.nz .

Ewan Sargent