Archdiocese’s 'Twelve Days of Christmas’ extends holiday celebration

Many people, when they wake up on the morning of Dec. 26, think Christmas is over. It’s time to put away the decorations and stow the wrapping paper for another year.

St. Damian students learn to sign Christmas songs

When music teacher Lynn Kingsbury at St. Damian School in Oak Forest learned that her students wouldn’t be allowed to sing in class because of COVID-19 restrictions, she made a dream of hers into reality — teaching the students how to sing in American Sign Language.

COVID-19 doesn’t stop Catholic Charities toy drive at basilica

For over 20 years, the St. Vincent de Paul Society at Queen of All Saints Basilica Parish, 6280 N. Sauganash Ave., has held its “Shared Christmas” program to collect toys, clothing and sundries during Advent for clients of Catholic Charities and other organizations in Chicago. The group would put tags on giving trees in the church with specific names and needs for parishioners to take home and purchase items to donate.

Group holds Christmas party for the homeless

Over 100 volunteers from Caridades de la Cruz offered food, clothing, showers and haircuts to 125 of the area’s homeless at the Shrine of Our Lady of Guadalupe on Dec. 21, 2019.

Pope's homily: Christmas says, 'You are loved'

Christmas night tells each person, no matter how poor or sinful, that they are utterly and totally loved by God, Pope Francis said as he celebrated Jesus' birth.

Keeping Christmas

This Christmas season, we plan to attend a Simbang Gabi Mass for the first time. It’s not so much that we are seeking out the traditional Filipino pre-Christmas novena to the Blessed Mother. It’s more that we have to be picking up Caroline from the train station at the time we would usually be at Mass for the last Sunday before Christmas, and the Saturday vigil Mass at our parish that weekend is part of the novena.

The shepherds have much to teach us

I have always found it striking that the first people to learn of the birth of Jesus were the shepherds on the hillside outside of Bethlehem. It is as if Luke the evangelist is telling us to pay attention to them if we want to understand how we should respond to the birth of Jesus.

Walk in solidarity with refugees at Christmas

Sometimes overlooked in the idyllic images of the Christmas story is the brief, touching tale told in the Gospel of Matthew: the flight of the Holy Family into Egypt.

Wonder

Our family was enjoying dinner on Christmas Eve before bundling up for midnight Mass at St. Thomas More Chapel at Yale University. Christopher and Sophie were tiny but precocious. Advent had been full of lengthy discussions during which their innately inquisitive selves delved ever more deeply into the practicalities of Santa Claus and his primary, global responsibility.

Creches tell the Nativity story using materials, symbols of local culture

Each culture, if not every home, has its own unique rendition of the Nativity.
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