COFEPOW is delighted to announce a new set of Christmas cards is now available for members to buy to help raise additional funds for the charity.
Available in packs of 5 of the five different designs, the cards have been devised by member Louise Reynolds and offered to the charity’s merchandising team, with all proceeds going towards COFEPOW’s fund-raising appeal.
Christmas Card packs can be purchased here: www.cofepow.org.uk/cofepow-merch/cofepow-christmas-cards.
Louise takes up the story...
“In December 1942, the Far-East POWs in Changi faced their first Christmas in captivity. It was a bleak prospect. My Dad, Padre Cordingly, was aware of their homesickness and threw himself into organisingChristmas celebrations in the little mosque he converted into a church.
“Touchingly, the men worked hard to recreate a Christmas tree, such as they’d had at home. They made tinfoil wrapped stars and found pretty shells to hang as tree decorations and created candles and lamps using coconut shells and oil. This was one of the illustrations I discovered in a bag of artwork by fellow POWs that my father had brought home with him. I always thought it would make an unusual Christmas card.
“Then I read in a recent COFEPOW newsletter that the merchandise team was requesting new ideas for items to sell to raise funds.
“I put my plan into action and sent a sample card toMerchandise Officers, Sylvie and Nick Bullen-Bell, who were very enthusiastic about the idea and wondered if I had any more ideas up my sleeve.
“I sent them a photo of the carved wooden ArchangelMichael which had also come home with my father, and had been used as a decorative finial on top of one of the posts behind the altar in one of his later chapels. We haven’t been able to discover the identity of the artist “LoK”, who drew the Changi Christmas decorations, but we learned only recently that the angel had been carved out of acacia wood by Eric Stacy, a POW who helped to design these impromptu chapels.
“The angel was also approved and then they made a request: could I find an illustration from my children’s book ‘Eric and Scrunchball’ for a card featuring theScottie dog? This little dog had waited at the garden gate for three and a half years for my Dad to return home and the story was written and illustrated by my adult children, as a handy way of introducing younger readers to the concept of war and perhaps their own relative’s experiences. I looked through the book and found a lively drawing of ‘Scrunchball’- the little dog waiting through the seasons and, in this case, in the snow. Coincidentally, there was also a Robin in the picture, so it looks quite ‘Christmassy.’”
The cards have now been bundled into packs of five, containing three of the ‘Christmas Decorations’ version, one of the ‘Archangel’ and one of the Scottie dog,and are priced at £5.00 per pack, plus £1.60 p+p, and are available at www.cofepow.org.uk/cofepow-merch/cofepow-christmas-cards.
Details of ordering/payment methods, including Paypal and overseas postage costs, can be obtained by emailing Nick or Sylvie at tickles.sbb@gmail.com or tel: 01245 222 604/mobile 07721 067501.
The trustees would like to extend their thanks to Louise for creating this range of Christmas Cards and for giving her time and energy to their development.
Please help us in our renewed drive to raise additional support for the COFEPOW charity, by proposing any further initiatives you think might be practicable and worthwhile, to Nick and Sylvie on the numbers above.
