We’re so excited to share our Christmas Smiles plans for 2024. Our festive programme of activities aims to support military children who have a parent deployed over the festive period.

With support from BAE Systems and Vivo Defence Services, we will once again be sending out 2,500 special Christmas boxes. Each Christmas box will be packed with Little Troopers resources to help children through deployment. There will also be a Little Troopers book and other treats to bring Christmas Smiles to thousands of forces children.

As well as the Christmas boxes, we’ve organised a busy calendar of free festive events and activities. These include a magical storytelling event with the Chelsea Pensioners at the Royal Hospital in London, and a free screening of Paddington in Peru at 5 ODEON cinemas.  There’s also an online pantomime and elf workshop that families can join wherever they are posted in the world. Finally we’ll be working with local theatres to giveaway pantomime tickets throughout December.

Louise founder of our charity comments: “Christmas is such a difficult time of year to have a parent away. This is why our charity works especially hard throughout November and December to ensure all forces children know we are here for them. It is important that they know they have somewhere to turn. We’re thrilled to be delivering our Christmas boxes again after they were such a success last year. We also hope that many families will also enjoy our online and in-person events. Our aim is to bring Christmas Smiles to lots of little troopers.”

Calendar of events

16^th November: Cookstars online baking – now open for bookings here.

30^th November: Storytelling with the Chelsea Pensioners. Register interest here.

8^th December: Cinderella Pantomime (online) – now open for bookings here.

14^th December: Elf workshops (online). Now open for bookings here.

21^st December: Free cinema screenings of Paddington in Peru at ODEON cinemas in Andover, Chatham, Leeds, Hereford and Port Solent. Bookings will open in December.

To receive details on how to book the cinema events, please register for our newsletter here. We’ll also have some special Christmas-themed prizes and pantomime tickets to giveaway via our newsletter, so don’t miss out!

Christmas Boxes

We work directly with military units across all three services to distribute the Christmas boxes to families impacted by deployment. Welfare personnel need to get in touch with us now if they want to receive a batch of boxes. We will be sending bulk orders to welfare unites who have personnel deployed over Christmas.  There is a limited number of boxes* so to register their interest they need to apply by 8^th November 2024.

We’ll also post out a small number of boxes directly to families closer to Christmas. Details about how to apply for these individual boxes will be released via the charity’s newsletter in December.

If you would like to support Christmas Smiles, we are looking for volunteers to help at our box packing event. This event will take place in Bovington on Wednesday 20^th November, please email us, if you can help.

* Please note if we receive more applications than we have boxes we will select randomly from all of the expressions of interest we receive.