Helping fill Christmas tables

Will Johnston with the team from Classic Builders who kindly donated food to help Fill the Bus. Photo/supplied

As you sit in the increasing traffic volumes that seem to just be the 'norm' now in the Bay, you might be having thoughts like: "Why am I living here? I moved here because it wasn't like this!"

As your stress levels rise because someone in the Honda Jazz cut you off, take a second to appreciate a couple of things this Christmas ...

Firstly, you probably have at least some food that is yum and special and a little different lined up for Christmas lunch/dinner, right?

Christmas; the day that a large portion of the globe checks its propensity to not be a gluttonous hog of a human at Aunty Maureen's door as they wander in to the smell of both turnkey and ham cooking.

You're handed a champers or a beer (or both, because, New Zealand)! There's a bunch of nibbles and the Maggi onion dip is basically on tap.

What about waking up on Christmas Day and it just being another day? You have bugger all food to eat, the kids are a bit gutted because their friends are all having Christmas dinners and getting heaps of presents.

As commercial and annoying as Christmas is sometimes, to me it's about having a little bit of indulgence and at the very least enough food so you feel full. This is why we at The Hits BOP 95FM and The Bay of Plenty Times ran Fill the Bus this year.

We filled a bus with food from amazing businesses and organisations in Tauranga who, along with us, realise that Christmas is about supporting the community that supports you, or just giving to people who don't have the luxuries you have.

Tauranga definitely pays it forward better than any other place I've lived in New Zealand.

Now if we could actually just go forward in the horrendous traffic ... maybe you should catch a bus and ease the congestion, once we've removed all the food from it that is!