A SON threw an early festive party for his mum — after she told him she was worried she would not live until Christmas.

Kevin Juste's mother Valerie has been battling terminal cancer since being diagnosed in May but despite treatment, including several rounds of chemotherapy, doctors have told the 76-year-old there is nothing more they can do.

But after saying she may not see another Christmas, Kevin, who lives in Horwich, decided to plan a special early Christmas treat by decorating his mother's conservatory as a Santa's grotto and getting the family around for a celebration.

The plans escalated after he posted an invitation on Facebook and businesses donated hundreds of items and the community rallied around 'Auntie Val'.

Kevin, a manager at Specsavers at Middlebrook, said: "Last week she got really upset because she said she wouldn't get to Christmas this year. I just said to her if you can't have Christmas this year we'll bring it to you so we decorated the conservatory to make it look like a Santa's Grotto.

"What we'd planned to do was invite all the family around. But she said she wanted to open it up to all the community and get the children from the community in to enjoy it.

"We got in touch with Tesco who put us in touch with their community officer and she was very interested in what we were doing.

"We went to the office to talk through what we were doing and it turned out my mum knew the lady's friends. They presented her with a huge selection of chocolates and they sent people dressed as elves, and that was just a part of what they did.

"We had 200 selection boxes made and 200 bags of candyfloss, my mum's friend made sandwiches and brought a load of crisps. I decided to put a message on Facebook for anyone in the community with children who wanted to come and visit the Grotto and it was especially nice for mum to see all their faces.

"Then I thought it would be really nice if we could get a donkey down so it would be like the nativity so I rang a hire company and said what we were doing and see what they had available to hire in the afternoon and they sent us a donkey dressed up in all the Christmas gear free of charge, it was great."

He added: "The whole street was involved in making it special and there were hundreds of people who got behind it, on the day we had about 240 children but with parents we had nearly 600 people coming through during the day and everyone came in their Christmas jumpers or dresses my cousin dressed as an elf and handed out selection boxes to people.

"All it was about was to see her happy, the response we got was breathtaking."