CHRISTMAS
Buying only religious Christmas cards, and boycotting those of a secular character, such as the Santa Claus stamps proposed by the Royal Mail, and collecting money and objects that could be useful for the hostel for the homeless run by the city council: these are just some of the ideas that the Catholic parish of St. Mary’s in Loughborough, in the Midlands is proposing to its own faithful to make Christmas more ethical, and enrich it with religious significance. From late November, a stall at the entrance to the church has been selling ‘fair trade’ food and objects, religious cards and calendars for Advent on which children can open a window from the 1st December and read a scriptural passage linked to the Nativity. Some associations such as the Union of Catholic Mothers and the disabled group are organizing bring-and-buy sales of second-hand articles to self-finance their own activities. Since the beginning of November the parish has also participated in the ‘Christmas Shoebox’ project, organized by the Samaritans. Shoeboxes, personalized according to the age and sex of a child from a country in Eastern Europe, have been filled by families and parishioners with little gifts, coloured pencils, notebooks, hairgrips, sweets and confectionary. There are those who go even further, such as the Mercer family, who forego their Christmas lunch: Katie and Geoff, members of the Rosmini Order, renounce turkey and all the trimmings to donate the money thus saved to charity. The Davis family is doing likewise; here the Christmas gifts, all of them homemade, are only unwrapped after Mass. From the microcosm of St. Mary’s to the rest of the United Kingdom, the concept of the ethical Christmas is only taking its first steps, while religious charities such as CAFOD, an agency under the auspices of the English Bishops’ Conference, or its ecumenical colleague Christian Aid and other non-Church humanitarian organization such as Oxfam” and Save the Children are proposing alternative gifts in their Christmas catalogues, such as a goat, a course of studies, a well, and medicines for the destitute in Latin America, Africa and Asia. It is calculated that throughout the UK the ‘ethical Christmas’ raised over 360 million pounds in 2005, a third more than in the previous year. These are significant figures, but only a drop in the ocean compared with the ‘consumer’ Christmas that absorbs some 14.7 billion pounds, 21 billion euros.
