The Salvation Army Windsor Centre of Hope had to adjust its plans for its traditional Christmas Dinner for a second straight year.
Executive Director Major Danny Pinksen says the COVID-19 pandemic forced the cancellation of the annual sit down Christmas meal at St. Clair Centre for the Arts.
He says instead, the Salvation Army is providing 650 Christmas food hampers to area families along with 2,000 toys.
"We still know that there's a number of families that need help so there for, we have registered 650 families who will be receiving a Christmas food hamper which basically is your turkey along with your fixings for a Christmas dinner," Pinksen said.
Pinksen says the Salvation Army is here to help others.
"Even though we're not able to have the formal, the traditional get together in terms of our Christmas dinner collectively, we're still to help individual families at Christmas."
He says distribution started last week.
"All last week we were doing distribution for our toys and our Christmas food hampers and so we had hundreds of families who came last week," Pinksen continued. "We still have a number of families who have yet to collect their Christmas food hamper, so they'll be doing so perhaps right up until December 24th this week."
Prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, the Salvation Army hosted a Christmas dinner in December 2019.
About 750 people gathered and enjoyed a traditional turkey dinner plus some live entertainment.