Christmas Is For Everyone

Liam, Allison and Asher Holland invite The Weekly to meet the most enthusiastic gingerbread decorators on earth. Samantha Trenoweth samples the treats and hears their moving family stories.

- Samantha Trenoweth

Christmas is coming in the north-west of Sydney. Toffee is bubbling on the stove, and in a room bedecked with tinsel, families decorate gingerbread houses with musk sticks and freckles. At the table by the door, Asher Holland and his grandmother, Lyn, put the final touches to their Christmas tree, made from an upturned ice-cream cone, green piped icing and a rainbow of Christmas-bauble sweets. This is the first of the year’s hotly-anticipated Christmas activities by Project CSC, which stands for Connect Support Community, and offers just that to families with kids who have additional needs.

“Christmas is Asher’s favourite time of year,” says his mum, Alli, one of the founders of this much loved Salvation Army initiative. “He likes to get up on Christmas morning and open the presents. Last year the penny dropped – what Christmas was – and he was so excited. He was tearing the paper open and couldn’t wait to see what was inside. That made it so much more fun for us too – to get him up: ‘Asher, Santa’s been. Let’s see what’s under the tree.’ Last year he was in hospital for Christmas so we postponed it until he came home. It was two days after, but who cares?”

Asher was born with an extremely rare genetic disorder, MECP2 Duplication Syndrome. He was diagnosed when he was 10 months old, not long after his elder brother, Elijah, died from the condition. Doctors told Alli and the boys’ father, Liam, that they didn’t think Asher would make his fifth birthday, but here he is, 13 years old and looking forward to another Christmas.