Town mayor Anne Johnson

Christmas is a time for giving, people giving of their time to help and support others is something we as a community do particularly well in Tavistock

In my time as Mayor I have been overwhelmed by the kind invitations to visit many voluntary and community groups and see the work they are involved with. It has been a real privilege to meet so many with committed involvement. There is much to celebrate with those who are giving their time, enthusiasm and energy to provide for others, often quietly and in more than one organisation. There is an enormous amount of talent in our town which I have been privileged to witness.

Two examples among many are the Tavistock Foodbank which is providing help to those most in need within our Town and the street and school pastors - volunteers who give their own time to help the vulnerable. I would like to take this opportunity to express my sincere thanks to everyone who contributes to these and our other community based initiatives in so many ways, great and small, which help to make Tavistock such a special place to live, work and visit.

I wish the residents of Tavistock and those people who visit and return to the town during this festive season a Happy Christmas and peaceful and prosperous 2013.

The Rev Michael Brierley

'I leant upon a coppice gate when Frost was spectre-gray.' So begins the poem 'The Darkling Thrush', written by the Dorset poet Thomas Hardy, as he surveyed the countryside in the depths of winter.

It's richly evocative for me of some Christmases that I've spent in Dorset — a bracing walk in the hills of the Blackmore Vale, with a roaring log fire back in the hearth of a thatched farmhouse.

Hardy gets a bit morose, as he was wont to do, at this wintry scene, until it's interrupted:

At once a voice arose among

The bleak twigs overhead

In a full-hearted evensong

Of joy illimited;

An aged thrush, frail, gaunt, and small,

In blast-beruffled plume,

Had chosen thus to fling his soul

Upon the growing gloom.

The sound of this little thrush in the middle of the bleak landscape seems to have opened out for Hardy a deeper horizon — the possibility of something more, and something good — what he calls 'some blessed Hope':

So little cause for carolings

Of such ecstatic sound

Was written on terrestrial things

Afar or nigh around,

That I could think there trembled through

His happy good-night air

Some blessed Hope, whereof he knew

And I was unaware.

My hope and prayer, and the hope and prayer of the churches in Tavistock, is that the beautiful wintry scenes of our locality this Christmas, and the church services which take place within them, might awaken or stir within us the love of God in Jesus Christ — 'some blessed Hope' of which hitherto we have been unaware.

So on behalf of all the ministers and fellowships of Tavistock, I wish you a very happy Christmas indeed.