Not every Bermudian family has the good fortune to celebrate the holidays with a table loaded with food, expensive presents and an enormous Christmas tree aglow with blinking lights.

Several, including one Elliot Street family, will spend the holidays just grateful for having each other, food to eat ... and a Christmas tree without lights because they've had their electricity cut off.

For almost three months, the 39-year-old single mother told The Royal Gazette , she has lived in her "back of town'' apartment with her three children and granddaughter without electricity.

The woman -- whose husband was murdered two years ago -- explained that as a hotel worker she was laid off and her electricity bill just "ran up'' until she could no longer afford to pay it.

Fortunately, she added, she has a gas stove for cooking.

While admitting the holidays were often depressing for her and she has "cried many a days'', the mother said the Coalition for the Protection of Children -- from whom her son was receiving treatment -- helped her cope.

"I don't want to bring down my family,'' she explained.

With Christmas coming she admitted that she had to make sure her eight-year-old son understood the family's hardship.

"I talk to him, I shouldn't be doing it, but I have to make him understand that we are lucky,'' she explained. "I tell him to think of those people out there who have no food.'' The resilient mother said it was her son and her two-year-old granddaughter that gave her the strength to survive.

"I think if I didn't have children I wouldn't care about anything,'' she said. "But then I'm the kind of person who would help someone else. Even now I try to help others.'' She said the most frustrating thing about her situation was "when you don't have money to pay bills, buy clothes for your kids or buy them lunch to take to school''.

She said she struggled to keep her telephone on because her son had asthma.

But she said her main priority has been making enough money to pay her rent.

"I've been without food, lights and a phone to pay for rent,'' she noted.

Social Services had not been much help to her or anyone else she knew, the mother claimed.

"They ask you all these personal questions and don't even have the decency to write to you and tell you we can't help you,'' she said. "If you don't have a phone and don't have a quarter you won't know and you just sit around and hope.'' No power for Xmas From Page 1 The hotel worker, who has been laid off for the winter, said Social Services did not think of what people had to pay out.

"They just look at the amount of money you make,'' she contended. "They don't think about things kids need like school clothes, shoes, equipment for school or haircuts.'' She also added that she would like to fully raise her granddaughter because the mother -- her daughter -- was young and could not afford to support the child.

"They would rather put her in foster care and pay someone else to take care of her than give me some money for her,'' she said.

The struggling mother also said those who have "made it'' or those in Government should stop condemning and focus on helping.

"Those people in Government who are all educated and those who got ahead shouldn't condemn the next person,'' she said. "Instead they should be working together to help others.'' Instead of building "big'' prisons, Government should build somewhere for young people to go and should try to make them feel good about themselves, she added.

"Encouragement means a lot to young people,'' the mother pointed out. "My grandmother use to say it's not what you say, it's how you say it.'' But the mother had praise for the Coalition for the Protection of Children where her son has been receiving trauma treatment as a result of his father's death.

"It has helped him a lot,'' she said. "He'd rather go there than go out and play.'' She said she would advise other parents who have children who have suffered some type of trauma or abuse to seek help from the Coalition.

And she advised other local single mothers to "think positive, have hope and to try to go for what they want and need''.

She said her greatest wish for herself, her children and granddaughter was to own her own house and to give them a good education.

"I would like to put them in a nice college and get an education,'' she said.

"I would like to go to school myself.'' However for the immediate future, the optimistic mother said she hoped to make enough money in 1996 to no longer need assistance.

"I don't want financial assistance,'' she stressed. "If I could work seven days a week I would.'' Unfortunately stories like this appeared to be more commonplace in Bermuda than many realise, according to Mrs. Fern Wade co-ordinator of the Hands of Love charity.

Mrs. Wade told The Royal Gazette that she was working with two single mothers who also did not have electricity.

One of the women had been without electricity since August and Mrs. Wade said the father owed thousands of dollars in child support.

"There is too much legislation and not enough action,'' Mrs. Wade stressed, adding that families in such conditions needed help immediately.

Mrs. Wade also said the "deadbeat dads'' issue needed to be addressed.

"Sending them to jail does not solve the problem,'' she charged. "When you send the fathers to jail your sending the whole family.'' She said there was a need for an alternative to prison because when the fathers were released, they came out with criminal records and unable to find jobs.

"And that does not help anyone,'' she insisted.

Mrs. Wade suggested that Government should require that delinquent fathers buy their children necessities rather than sending money.

This way, she explained, fathers could not complain that mothers spent the money on themselves.

Mrs. Wade also suggested that the public should rely less on Government for solutions.

"There are a lot of people who have a lot out there,'' she noted. "If they could just look in their pockets, 'fridges, time and just share, it would make a difference.'' When contacted yesterday, Social Services Minister Harry Soares told The Royal Gazette he was aware of concerns about Social Services' response to emergency situations like the ones described above.

Mr. Soares said he arranged to meet with Ms Keivamae Smith -- the woman who has been spearheading the plight of a group of single mothers -- in the new year to discuss the issue.