The Truth about Christmas :

(December 2005)

We all have our own favourite Christmas memories and stories. They help us understand and interpret the events of this celebration which even the agnostic shares.

One Christmas Eve when I was about six or seven, it seemed magical when it began to snow. Christmas cards were coming to life.

About tea time there was a knock at the door and as I ran to answer my father said "I'll go, it is dark out there". Peering around him as he opened the door I saw a man and a woman with a baby silhouetted among the snowflakes.

My father spoke with them in a kindly way then reached into his pocket and gave them some money. I don't know how much, and he hadn't very much, but they were very grateful.

Fr Perry Gildea - Vincentian Fathers

Cliftonville Road, Belfast 15

It was my first experience of begging. "Why did you give them money?", I wanted to know. "They are poor and hungry", said my father. "It is Christmas Eve, and it might just have been Joseph, Mary and the baby Jesus, just seeing would we turn them away too."

In my childish mind I was impressed by the thought that Mary and Joseph might have called on us for help. Later I came to understand that Christ himself identifies personally with those we class as poor.

"Whatsoever you do to my sisters and brothers, that you do unto me".

As Christmas decorations and lights begin to dominate our shops and streets we get drawn into the busyness of Christmas.

For Vincentians the time before Christmas is one of the busiest and most anxious. There are so many people and families who depend on the Society of St Vincent de Paul, channeling food and goods of all kinds into their homes.

If it were not for the efforts of so many in the Society and their supporters, Christmas would be a hollow mockery for many!

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We must try and keep in mind that at Christmas with the birth of the Christ child we celebrate the greatest ever gift, when the Word of God relinquished his divine state to be born into our troubled world in solidarity with the poor and the weak.

For all your work for the needy this Christmas may the words of Jesus himself be realised for you and yours;

"and there will be gifts for you; a full measure, pressed down, shaken together, and running over, will be poured into your lap; because the amount you measure out is the amount you will be given back".

Fr Perry (December 2005)

No room at the Inn