![Celebrate Christmas with a farmer. Photo: Stephen Burns Celebrate Christmas with a farmer. Photo: Stephen Burns](/images/transform/v1/crop/frm/32LqHZrHAKYLTZidaVK8Cqa/a852cd65-3b9c-4344-89ee-76671114a530.JPG/r0_376_4032_2643_w1200_h678_fmax.jpg)
This is a special time of year for many, a chance to celebrate together, share a meal with family and friends from near and far, a chance to pause and reflect on the year's successes, and a chance to rest and recharge for the year ahead.
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The way we spend Christmas Day is as varied as we are as people: whether it's celebrating Jesus' birth at our local church, or sharing an early morning cuppa on the verandah with granddad while kookaburras welcome the sunrise with laughter, catching a wave on the old longboard that spends most of its life at the back of a tractor shed, cramming an ever-growing family into folding chairs around the old dining table while the air-conditioner beats out a steady rhythm.
Regardless of what your day will look like, whether your Christmas dinner involves a card table groaning under the weight of many kilos of seafood, or a hot lunch with glazed ham and roast turkey with all the trimmings, or even a lean salad to help counteract the effects of the festive season, all that food will have been prepared with love for those special people in our lives.
As most readers of The Land know, that food doesn't magically appear on supermarket shelves, but is the product of perspiration and dedication from many people all the way along our supply chain, from the farmer and agronomist to the packer, the forklift driver, the truckie, and the shelf-stacker before it arrives in the kitchens of the many expert home cooks around Australia.
With that in mind, and on behalf of the farmers of NSW, I would ask you all for a small Christmas gift this year: take a moment before your meal to think about where your food came from, and the journey it made from the paddock to your dinner plate. Share this thought as you share your table with friends, family, or those strangers welcomed into your home, as we all wish one another a very Happy Christmas.
- Xavier Martin, NSW Farmers president