Visitors will be greeted by a 10m steel City Mission Christmas tree which has been placed inside the cathedral for the 'Twelve Days of Christmas' event.

Bookings will be taken from December 3 to 18 for groups of up to 50 visitors at a time on weekdays. Each person will need to give a $25 koha donation which will go to the Christchurch City Mission. Read more

It was going to be a personal retreat.

But it didn't happen.

There were too many wise men and women, too many shepherds. The angel song was loud and competing with commercial advertising, and the stable door was blocked with Christmas trees and tinsel.

Entry to a place of peace came on Boxing Day.

Was your Christmas also like that?

Then, like me, you are now reflecting on all that noise and messiness and finding with surprise that Jesus was being born in every part of it.

I should know by now that He doesn't conform to our rules.

Here we were, trying to find time to visit the stable, when He was out there in the streets, the shops, hospitals, pubs, homes and churches.

He travelled in planes. He visited prisons.

He was everywhere.

Looking back, I recognise the times my old heart melted with his newborn touch.

So now, I will list a few experiences and suggest you do the same.

You too, will have encountered him in unexpected places, so here are the pre-Christmas memories that I hold and treasure.

• Three primary schools sing waiata and do haka with beautiful enthusiasm. Some children are Maori, some Pakeha or Indian, Asian, Amercian. Their performance was professional. I was so pleased to see several politicians in the audience.
• A man on the street begs for money to take his dog to the vet. I don't think he has a dog, but he knows that passers-by are more sympathetic to dogs than to beggars. We talk for a while and I hear Jesus saying "The son of man has no place to lay his head."
• A teenager is playing her violin in the train station. She is playing carols. A mother with a child of about three years of age, has stopped to listen. The little boy is dancing to the music. I think, Did Jesus dance? Well, he does now.
• Two women bring lovely cloth placemats they have made. On each mat, there is the handprint of one of their children. Such treasure! The children will grow, but the mats will always portray them as I knewthem. I think of Jesus' hands at various stages, small, exploring his surroundings, healing others, breaking bread, and being wounded by nails.

Before Christmas, I needed to sort papers, including lots of letters from schoolchildren. One from a girl in California, asked all the usual questions.

• What is your favourite colour?
• What is your favourite food?
• The last question was the most interesting. Are you still alive?

That last question connected me to Jesus. Of course He is still alive.

The birth of the Christ child is in all of us.

We may not be aware of it but there will be times when we say, "Where did that cone from?" or
"Why do I feel this way?

It is then that we realise that Christmas is not a historical view of a holy child born in an animal shelter.

The birth is here and now, and we are all stables.

• Joy Cowley is a wife, mother, grandmother, great-grandmother and retreat facilitator. Joy Cowley is a wife, mother, grandmother, great-grandmother and retreat facilitator.

Why such a lowly place?

Our views about status miss the message, and we must wrap this birth in splendour - angel song, an unusual star, three kings coming to bow before the child.

The wrapping continues until Jesus is lost under layers of Christmas trees, gifts and bearded Santas.

So this Christmas, let us let go of all the decoration and spend some time in wonder at the ordinariness of the Word of God made flesh.

Jesus knew who he was but never used that knowledge for self-aggrandisement. He identified with all things ordinary.

Like us, Jesus enjoyed good food and the company of friends.

I think that if he had written a gospel, it could be called "The Gospel of Table" so often are meals mentioned.

We know very little about Jesus' childhood. When he was 12, the age of maturity for a Jewish by, he left his patents to talk to some learned men.

The trouble was, he didn't tell Joseph and Mary, and they were distraught, looking for their lost son.

Does that echo with some teenage incident in our lives?

Let's look at other aspects of Jesus' humanity,

Jesus got angry with stupid and selfish people.

Jesus wept when he learned that his friend Lazarus had died.

Jesus got tired. One time he was so exhausted he slept in the bottom of the boat during a storm.

Jesus experienced loneliness. He said, "The Son of Man has no place to lay his head." I don't think he was talking about a pillow.

Through the Gospels we see growth in Jesus' experience. He had told his disciples not to go into Samaria or the Pagan territories because his mission was to the lost tribes of Israel.

Later, he talked with women in both those areas, leading him to preach to the people.

I feel that Jesus achieved full maturity during his ‘agony in the garden.' There, he accepted what was planned for him and did not try to defend himself

I grew up with the frequent reminder that Jesus died for my sins. I accepted that but also had the question, "Then why was he resurrected?' There had to be something more important than me swearing at my sister.

Jesus gives us the answer as part of the experience. What is resurrected is always greater than what has died.

So this year, I will leave the tinsel and Christmas cake to be with the Word of God-made Flesh. I want to journey through his humanity and humility, from his humble birth to his presence here and now.

Do you feel a part of that?

Look closely. You may recognise his presence in you.

• Joy Cowley is a mother, grandmother, great-grandmother, writer and retreat facilitator.

I actually feel as if I'm back in July somewhere.

Putting up the decorations triggers memories of Christmas' that were either tough or wonderful, and final relief comes when the Christmas lights work first pop.

Wrapping up the gifts and putting them under the tree with my favourite Christmas CD playing gives me the warm fuzzies.

Posting and receiving Christmas cards is a way of keeping up with the news of friends dotted around the world.

When I make my great, great grandmother's Irish pastry recipe for my fruit mince pies, handed down through the generations, I find a certain family connection with those who have long gone and whom I never knew.

I thoroughly enjoy the end of year gatherings and Christmas functions once I've figured out what to wear along with my Christmas earrings.

Christmas offers a unique sense of friendship, enabling us to enquire about what others are doing for Christmas because no one wants to see another alone.

Wishing Merry Christmas is a prayer of blessings offered and received.

Yet, when these age-old traditions, sounds, memories, smells, songs, tastes, and customs are peeled back, the truth that God entered human history in the birth of Jesus 2,000 years ago stands before us.

Simple and uncomplicated this child is God. This invisible God becoming visible.

A personal God who knows each of us by name and remains with us forever in the spirit of Jesus to this very day.

Advent is about pausing to take all of this in.

At home, the nativity set is placed on the mantelpiece and the advent wreath on the dining room table, both reminders of the reason for the season.

I let Advent speak to my heart. What do I hear? What do you hear?

The joint pining with our Old Testament faith ancestors longing for the coming of Emmanual, perhaps? - and today's great hope in Jesus coming again.

"A maiden is with child and will soon give birth to a son, whom she will call Emmanual" Isaiah prophesied in 7:14.

Conceived by the power of God's Holy Spirit, Mary and Joseph didn't need to have a gender reveal party.

Isaiah had let the cat out of the bag centenaries earlier!

No time to prepare baby's bedroom either.

They had to get to Bethlehem's smallish and obscure town to participate in the compulsory Roman census.

With zero accommodation, all came to pass when Mary gave birth to their first-born son named Jesus in a farm yard stable. Just getting her breastfeeding established, it was back on the donkey bound for Egypt to avoid their baby being killed by the narcissist Herod.

These young parents would have been very conscious that other parents would have blamed them for their own sons' killings by Herod's lynch men.

This would have wrenched their hearts at the huge cost of lives slaughtered to protect their boy.

It was a close shave for Jesus, but not come Good Friday.

This child - this saviour of the world who bought the message of Joy, would come to be crucified and rise, opening the way to life eternal in Heaven. Death didn't have the final say. Christmas is mixed with joy and sorrow.

And it's in this exact truth when we find our lives turned upside down in suffering and personal struggles, we discover deep within a certain joy, all because of this baby being born. This God-who-is-with-us is in the thick and thin of our lives.

Franciscan priest Richard Rohr says this in his book called Preparing for Christmas on the last page.

Incarnation is already Redemption.

The problem is solved.

Now go and utterly enjoy all remaining days.

Not only is it "Always Advent," but every day can now be Christmas because the one we thought we were just waiting for has come once and for all.

• Sue Seconi - The Catholic Parish of Whanganui - Te Parihi Katorika Ki Whanganui

An outcry by conservatives and the Vatican led the U-turn on the policy, which termed the document an attempt to "cancel" Europe's Christian roots.

The EU Commissioner for Equality, Helena Dalli, said the draft guidelines had aimed to highlight European diversity and showcase the "inclusive nature of the European Commission."

The draft didn't meet Commission standards and failed to achieve its stated purpose, she said.

Commenting that "The guidelines clearly need more work," Dalli said the next version would take into account concerns that had been raised.

These concerns included Italian conservatives saying the guidelines were "cancelling Christmas".

Another voice raised against the EU guidelines was that of the Vatican's secretary of state, Cardinal Pietro Parolin.

He made his views known with an unusually sharp critique in a video Tuesday on the Vatican News portal.

While he lauded efforts to eradicate discrimination in the EU bloc, Parolin said initiatives can't involve the "cancellation of our roots, the Christian dimension of our Europe, especially with regard to Christian festivals.

"Of course, we know that Europe owes its existence and its identity to many influences, but we certainly cannot forget that one of the main influences, if not the main one, was Christianity itself," he said.

Antonio Tajani of Italy's center-right Forza Italia party and the president of the constitutional affairs commission of the European Parliament was delighted at the retraction of the EU guidelines.

"Viva Natale!" ("Long live Christmas!"), Tajani tweeted.

"Long live a Europe of common sense."

Source

• AP News
• Image:Paris Discovery Guide
  

The answer used to be provided at Easter, with the Christian climax in death by crucifixion, followed by resurrection.

The Jesus story wrestled with death not being merely death. Today, however, the sacred meaning of Easter is little more than a dusty relic.

For the secular modern age, belief in any form of life after death is in doubt.

The metaphysical supports that directed earlier generations, keeping them on their feet and moving, have lapsed.

Most no longer believe in a supernatural being — whether providential, guiding, punishing, or forgiving.

God has become a figment of the archaic imagination; gods of any type are mere alien superstitions, held once upon a time by naive, even primitive ancestors.

Belief has long gone in an eternal destination for the departing soul at death — heaven or hell.

The existence of a soul is in question; never mind whether that hypothetical soul survives the death of the individual human.

All in all, human consciousness has narrowed down to focus on mortal life, lived here and now, on a this-worldly plane; a finite span bound by birth and death, governed by everyday pleasures and pains.

Individuals today find themselves in the position of Socrates, if they are honest.

After being sentenced to death at his trial in Athens in 399BC, the 70-year-old philosopher reflected that he did not fear death.

He told his fellow citizens that he did not know what awaited him once he was gone.

There were two possibilities.

Either death was final, like a form of eternal dreamless sleep. Or his soul was immortal and would migrate off, somewhere beyond, to join other immortal souls. Socrates was the paradigm agnostic.

The death question has not gone away.

Its centrality for all humans, and in all times, is illustrated by the fact religions pivot their theology on finding an answer to it.

The first great work in the Western tradition, Homer's Iliad, focuses on death: even though it is a war and conquest story, the nature of mortality is of much greater concern than fighting and glory.

Christianity instated the cross as its commanding symbol, a death and transcendence symbol.

A different world

Today, in a seemingly quite different world, what is it possible to believe?

Let me open by considering a room full of people.

When a stranger comes through the door, those whom they encounter will recognise that a kind of force has arrived, changing the atmosphere.

An extraordinary concentration of presence has infiltrated among those assembled.

That individual human being is more than the sum of their known and observed parts: physical form, the complex of their gestures and expressions, voice, and attributes of character, and its biography.

The derogatory Yiddish term nebbish underlines the point, in negation, referring to an inconsequential person whose presence on entering a room creates a vacuum.

We see this in parenthesis in some fictional examples.

When Achilles stands up unarmed on the edge of raging battle, in Book Eighteen of The Iliad, and the goddess Athena bathes his head and shoulders in metaphoric golden light, the fighting Trojans stop in mid-stride, quaking in fear, although they are armed and winning the battle.

When Audrey Hepburn enters the royal ball in My Fair Lady the assembled throng is hushed, awe-struck by her shimmering beauty, a beauty that outshines gorgeous gown, gracious figure, and finely proportioned face.

She is a modern goddess, a film "star", the many associations with divinity indicating that some kind of supernatural glow is seen to have manifested, emanating from her.

The stranger who enters the room is more than personality, although personality may have its own impact, whether brashly domineering, slyly insincere, sparklingly alert or even darkly gloomy.

Personality may even predominate.

It, in turn, may be amplified by physical bulk, litheness of movement, fidgety restlessness or languor.

Nor does the stranger introduce just a new energy field.

Shadowing the physical form, some kind of spiritual aura has been revealed.

Those already in the room, were they to calm themselves, put their egos into recess and half-close the eyes, might sense a concentration of spectral force.

Sacred impregnation of the ether contrasts with carnal thereness.

Here lies the supreme potential power of living humans.

Intimidation may follow, as with Achilles on the edge of battle.

Alternatively, a process of psychic contagion may impose myriad other influences.

The presence of the other can inspire, excite or charm; calm or unsettle; or distress, deplete and depress.

Psychic contagion is arguably the least understood factor in personal and social relations, and the most underestimated.

This is why a corpse is unnerving.

The physical form is there, largely unchanged. But the animating presence has gone, the light switched off.

The face is a mask, whether chalklike or heavily made-up, ghastly, quite different from the prosaic outer form of the person who recently was.

The eerie horror that leaves the observer grave, shaken and mute — that simply cannot be comprehended — is that this person, lying here as a ghostly physical residue, is gone forever.

No breath remains to flutter the veil.

The body, cold to the transgressive touch, commands deathly silence, awakening consciousness of the vacancy of life, its little consequence when seen in the context of the infinite, eternal nothing.

This negative power in turn, however, implies an opposite positive truth — two sides of the same coin — a truth of such engaging potency that to remove or deny it may paralyse the witness.

It is difficult to believe that the concentration of spectral force that, but an hour earlier, animated the human entity that is now a cadaver simply disappears into nothing.

It is said that death is final. But those are mere words.

For the preceding 3000 years in our culture, it was assumed that a soul inhabited the living person.

According to most beliefs, it arrived at birth and departed at death. With their last breath, the person expired. The spirit that was breathed out for the last time was the "immortal soul".

To progress further we need to distinguish between two quite different phenomena animating the human psyche.

On the one hand, there is vitality, energy, life force and ego.

On the other, there is soul.

The former constellation is mortal. Energy ebbs as a person gets older or sickens; the ego shrinks, even withers. When the person dies their vitality is snuffed out.

If we reflect on the nature of the human ego, it appears unambiguously mortal.

The novel (and film) Gone with the Wind makes the point — a 2014 survey found it still the second favourite book of American readers, just behind the Bible.

Gone with the Wind contrasts Scarlett O'Hara, as lead character, with Melanie Hamilton.

Scarlett is a force of nature, extraordinarily vital and resilient; petulantly childish, selfish, insensitive and indomitable; all ego, yet shrewd and realistic in practical matters.

Melanie is soulful, an exemplar of selfless charity and goodness.

She is low on ego, naive and sickly, whereas Scarlett is diminutive of soul.

Scarlett's vitality seems to have its source less in a love of life's potential fulfil­ments than a tenacious clinging, driven by an assertive, buoyant ego that refuses to be cowed.

The inference may be drawn that once the struggle is over nothing will be left — and indeed for Scarlett, the life essence is struggle.

Scarlett's one reverent attachment is to her land, Tara, expressed at the end of the novel, if only as a consoling flicker.

In general, the animal life force, which Scarlett incarnates to the full, does expire.

With Melanie, the grip on actual living is weak; the influence of her spirit strong and resolute.

Most who move within her orbit, hold her in awed respect.

She is the unassuming centre of gravity, her grace, kindness and incandescent virtue a beacon to others.

It is more difficult to imagine the extinguishing of her spirit when she dies.

St Augustine made a distinction between two deaths, the death of the soul and that of the body.

The soul may die but the person goes on living — they die twice. As an illustration, those rendered permanently unconscious by a severe stroke, with the body still breathing, the heart beating, may give the overwhelming impression to those close to them that the spirit has already absented itself — the animating aura of the person, or the soul, appears to have departed.

Primo Levi, in If This is a Man (1958), his account of his experience in Auschwitz, draws an inflexible distinction among humans between those who are saved, and those drowned — a more useful distinction today, it seems to me, than the moralised one between the saved and the damned.

The distinction was more obvious in the extreme environment of the Nazi concentration camp.

Those who had lost the will to live but were still alive formed an anonymous mass, continually renewed and always identical, of non-men who marched and laboured in silence, the divine spark dead within them, already too empty to really suffer.

JK Rowling's Harry Potter is the singular book and film phenomenon of recent times.

The seven-volume Harry Potter series posits a similar understanding of the immortal soul, by casting sinister black, wraithlike creatures called Dementors, which chill the atmosphere whenever they are present, making anyone in their vicinity gloomy — they represent psychic contagion writ large.

When Dementors attack, they attempt to kiss the victim, to suck out the soul through the mouth.

In a largely post-Christian world, it is telling that Levi and Rowling should evoke almost identical imagery for the existence of the soul. Auschwitz had swarmed with Dementors.

What would sceptics say?

In fact, they can counter with one simple axiom: fear of death gives birth to many a powerful illusion.

The pure atheist, at the extreme, does not believe in God and goes further, to reject all metaphysics.

A counter-faith is set up, a new orthodoxy staked to materialist science which, it is held, explains everything.

Human beings are but material entities and, when they die, matter rots and decays, returning to dust.

Acute human experience, notably death, may however leave psychic residues that are more substantial than fantasy imaginings.

Once, when visiting the German city of Munich, I was shocked to see a station at the end of an ordinary train line named Dachau.

How, I thought, could a "normal" suburb be built on the site of one of the most notorious Nazi concentration camps?

Experience points in two opposite directions here.

It is common to revisit a place in which fateful personal events had taken place — tragedy, romance, sporting triumph or even the house in which one grew up — to find it resistant to nostalgic memory, cold and empty, indifferent to the past.

Maybe the suburb of Dachau is just like any other modern Western community, with a bank, a supermarket and a playground.

The minds of the living may be haunted by ghosts from their own past, but those ghosts will vanish with them, or even before.

Yet the opposite is equally true.

There are places haunted by ghosts from the past — personally, I find it hard to imagine this is not the case with Dachau.

There are spaces that resonate with sacred atmosphere — Delphi comes to my mind, as does the inside of Bourges cathedral, the Alhambra in Granada, and some ancient Australian Aboriginal ceremonial grounds.

Romain Rolland wrote of an "oceanic feeling" he was never without, of something limitless, unbounded, a sensation of eternity.

He suggested that this feeling is the universal source of religious energy, whatever the religion and whatever the particular forms of belief and worship.

We are in territory in which there are no proofs.

Even Rolland remarked that the oceanic feeling does not necessarily imply personal immortality.

There are cases in which the soul is stifled by the housing personality.

Shakespeare's Richard II, as king, is a case in point, lacking judgment: he is proud, wasteful, lazy, irresponsible and unjust.

Once he loses power, however, he switches into a dignified, majestic reflection on life:

Let's talk of graves, of worms, and epitaphs, Make Dust our paper, and with rainy eyes

Write sorrow on the bosom of the earth … For within the hollow crown; That rounds the mortal temples of a king... Keeps Death his court; ….

Once Richard tunes in to things of ultimate gravity, he stills the audience.

He has been transported out of the realm of worldly ambition.

Liberated, he surrenders to timeless truth, embracing it, and he gains the rare power of being able to speak with its voice.

The deep and eternal truths about the human condition are one of the soul's currencies.

What I am suggesting here is that Rolland's abiding sense of eternity beyond the individual is matched by a sense of eternity within.

An electric current needs two poles. It is the conjoining of the two, beyond and within, that counters the threat of drowning.

The belief in the immortal soul has its roots somewhere here.

• John Carroll is professor emeritus of sociology at La Trobe University.
• First published in The Australian. Republished with permission.

The "economic miracle" of the country's post-war recovery was in full swing. Before the end of the decade, a best-selling book would tout Japan as Number One.

However, the miracle was not yet complete, even in the capital Tokyo.

Large parts of the metropolis were not yet connected to a sewer system, and so what English-speakers called "honey wagons," trucks that pumped out septic tanks, were a common sight and smell in residential neighbourhoods.

Buildings slapped together after World War 2 were being replaced with more substantial structures.

Supermarkets had not yet replaced vendors selling foodstuffs and household items from handcarts.

They used bells, horns or chants to advertise their presence, with different instruments and tunes depending upon their product. I miss them much more than I miss the honey wagons.

Equipped with only a few weeks of language study, I decided to spend my Christmas vacation from language school up north on the snowy island of Hokkaido, staying with a priest in a coal-mining town where the travel instructions were basically, "Go to the middle of nowhere and turn right into the mountains."

The middle of nowhere was easy to find since it was the town where steam locomotives that served much of the island met up with diesel trains.

So, there was always a cloud of black smoke over the place visible from far away.

Now that town is no longer a travel hub, and it does not even exist anymore; it was merged with another.

When I arrived, the priest told me that he had been contacted by people in a little settlement farther out in the mountains.

They wanted to have a Christmas party for their kids.

They knew that the church had something to do with Christmas and knew as well that the priest would not arrive empty-handed.

So, we loaded fruit and candy into the car on Christmas Eve and drove off into a winter wonderland. We drove, that is until we could go no farther on the snowbound road. We hiked the last part of the way.

The party was in a shack with the wind whistling through the walls. There was a handful of kids and a drunk man in a Santa suit.

The priest told the kids the story of Christmas and then taught them to play Bingo.

One of them was intellectually handicapped and could not understand the numbers for the game.

Since I had at least learned my numbers, we were paired as a team.

Here I was in a drafty shed with snow blowing through the walls.

A drunken Santa Claus was snoozing in the corner.

I understood next to nothing that was being said, teamed up with a poor kid for whom, apart from pointing to numbers on a Bingo card, I could do nothing.

I was on the far side of the globe from my family and friends, and all that Christmas with them meant.

I began to feel lonely, thoroughly miserable, and sorry for myself.

What the hell kind of Christmas was this?

And then, so forcefully that it almost seemed audible enough to be heard by everyone, one word came to me: Bethlehem.

This year will be a kind of reenactment of that Christmas in a shed in Japan for many of us.

COVID-19 forces us to do without so much that traditionally makes the feast and season special - being with family and friends, partying, visiting, shopping, gifting, feasting, even churchgoing.

This year, much of that is impossible.

Many of us mourn family and friends lost to the disease.

Many are out of work and sinking beneath financial disaster.

Schools are disrupted.

Experts tell us that things will worsen as January is likely to be the worst month before vaccines become widely available and begin to beat back the plague.

What the hell kind of Christmas is this?

With so much else stripped away, even life itself, one word remains. Bethlehem.

Like it or not, we are forced to face this Christmas with everything stripped away except the simple fact that Christ is with us not as a doll under the Christmas tree, not as the subject of songs and stories, not as a distraction from the other elements of the season, but as God with us, Emmanuel.

God with us in our worst situation.

God with us in our own poverty and that of others. God with us not to make everything as we wish, but God with us to share our confusion, our disappointment, our pain, our death.

That is the meaning of Bethlehem.

This year, Christmas is either about God with us, or it is nothing.

If Covid Christmas teaches us that, next year, we may resume the trappings of the season, but with new unclouded knowledge of what the feast really is.

A note: that priest with whom I spent my first Japan Christmas died last April, one of Covid's victims.

• Bill Grimm is the publisher of UCANews.com. He is a Catholic priest and Maryknoll missioner who lives in Japan.

During his Sunday blessing this week, Francis commented that the Vatican's Christmas tree - itself a symbolic reason for hope - went up last week in St. Peter's Square.

Work is also underway to build the life-size Nativity scene next to it, Francis said.

Francis said symbols of Christmas - like the tree and the Nativity - "are signs of hope, especially in this difficult period."

The faithful should remember the true meaning of Christmas - the birth of Jesus, he added.

They should lend a hand to the neediest, he said.

"There's no pandemic, there's no crisis that can extinguish this light."

The Vatican hasn't released the pope's Christmas schedule.

If he follows his usual form, however, he will celebrate a Christmas Eve Mass and then offers a blessing on Christmas Day.

The Vatican's liturgical services are being held without the general public present because of COVID-19.

Source

• AP
• Image: Crux Now

The card, being sold online starting Friday through a consortium run by Marvin Getman, a US-based dealer in rare books and manuscripts, depicts an English family toasting the recipient with glasses of red wine. Read more

"The Vatican Christmas Cookbook" is written by chef David Geisser, who is a former member of the Vatican's Swiss Guard, along with author Thomas Kelly. Read more

Weather forced the event indoors, but spirits were not dampened as David Midland and Salvation Army Brass Band led the rousing mid-winter carols in the drier surrounds of the beautiful St. Aidan's Church. Continue reading

Iraq's Chaldean Catholic Church is one of the largest in Iraq and the diaspora.

Cardinal Patriarch Louis Raphael Sako, head of the church, said the decision was made "out of respect" for victims; those killed and wounded in recent anti-government protests and in solidarity with the pain of their families.

"There will be no decorated Christmas trees in the churches or streets, no celebrations and no reception at the patriarchate," the Patriarch said in a statement on Tuesday.

"We will take refuge in prayer for the victims," said Sako.

His announcement coincided with a gathering in Baghdad of Iraqi politicians threatened by the revolt and their Shia regional allies whose involvement in Iraq's affairs is strongly rejected by the protesters.

Since early October authorities have failed to suppress mass demonstrations against corruption, a lack of services and jobs.

Around 430 people have died and 20,000 wounded in the mass rallies reports the Irish Times.

While the protests are in the main taking place in Shia Muslim-majority areas, the Church had taken part as an act of solidarity.

Iraq, a major global oil exporter has 20 per cent of the population living in poverty.

A young populaion, youth make up 60 per cent of Iraq's 40 million people and they see no future for themselves as long as the current regime remains in power.

Twenty-five per cent of youth are unemployed.

Sources

• Irish Times

This is an increase from last year, when nearly 90,000 security personnel guarded about 50,000 churches across the country.

An official of the National Police Traffic Corps told journalists that police, military personnel and members of government agencies will guard churches and vital tourism sites during the celebrations.

"These are our targets which we need to focus on. We want to make sure that everything will run peacefully there," he said. Continue reading

Several hundred people will gather in the North Dunedin Catholic church for the festive, family-friendly service.

The highlight, as it is each year, will be the narrated nativity play presented by 20 or more of the parish children.

Preschoolers to pubescent teens, dressed in makeshift robes, with tea-towels tied to their heads, will be transformed into the shepherds, angels and Wise Men of the Christmas story. Read more

"I wish to encourage the beautiful family tradition of preparing the Nativity scene in the days before Christmas, but also the custom of setting it up in the workplace, in schools, hospitals, prisons and town squares."

"It is my hope that this custom will never be lost and that, wherever it has fallen into disuse, it can be rediscovered and revived,'' the Pope wrote.

The Salvation Army says comparing Christmas 2018 with Christmas 2019, it expects an extra 600 people to be in its housing this Christmas.

1187 people were in its centres on Christmas Eve in 2018, said their national director of community ministries, Jono Bell.

He said the Army had predicted the rise by looking at the number of people continuing to live on the streets, in a car or in motels.

"For most of us, Christmas is a time of joy and celebration, but for many others, it is another day without food or shelter and can be filled with stress and loneliness," Bell said.

Bell said the Salvation Army is offering wraparound support to all who spend time in their facilities at Christmas.

"Throughout the year we help thousands of people with emergency food and housing, as well as budgeting sessions, social work and counselling.

"Christmas is a particularly tough time for many people who struggle without enough food or shelter, let alone gifts under the tree."

• The Salvation Army supports around 16,000 people or 5000 families at Christmas.
• We provide over 1800 people with transitional housing during the Christmas season.
• Almost 16,000 clients receive Christmas gifts.
• Almost 15,000 receive Christmas hampers to help them put on Christmas dinner.
• Between December and January, we provide almost 10,500 social work sessions to families and individuals.

Sources

• Stuff
• Salvation Army

Maybe. Maybe not. She could have been sweeping the floor. Or grinding corn for a meal. Those activities can also be sacred.

We are reminded of times when God has been manifest in simple household tasks.

I imagine myself in Mary's place. I'm at the kitchen sink.

I feel a tap on the shoulder.

I turn and see something out of a 17th-century painting, a tall man with wings as big as feathered tents.

What is my reaction?

I am dreaming! Or I've just lost a few marbles!

It is not surprising that Mary sounded a bit confused.

What is surprising is that her faith went to the heart of Gabriel's extraordinary message, and she said, "Let it be done to me."

At this time of the year, shops are filling up with gifts, glitter and pictures of Santa Claus.

But the angel Gabriel closes a gap in time.

Under the commercial frippery, we see Mary largely pregnant.

We see her taking Joseph's hand and placing it on her swollen belly so that he can feel the baby moving.

Through a wall of flesh, the carpenter's calloused hand touches a tiny foot that will one day lead the way.

Neither Joseph nor Mary know how big this new life will be.

They simply know love and wonder.

They have been called to something far beyond the ordinary.

So now comes the question, how do you and I answer God's call away from the ordinary?

It probably won't be a tap on the shoulder, but rather, a gentle touch to the heart.

I might not notice it, except it comes back.

Again and again.

It's not some idea making words in the head, but a gentle feeling that is asking something of me.

It nudges me in a new direction that may take me out of my comfort zone.

That's when resistance kicks in.

I go further than Mary's "How can this be?"

I find solid reasons why I should not do this.

1. I am too busy,
2. I'm happy the way I am.
3. I am not qualified.
4. People will think I'm mad.
5. I am bound to fail.

But the invitation keeps coming.

Eventually, I weigh my objections against the feeling of call.

There is no life in my excuses. They are heavy and dead.

The gentle movement in the heart, however, has life and love.

You too, will know this. It's how God works in us.

So at this point, we say with Mary, "Let it be done to me."

We should have said, "Yes!"

That's when we hear angel song in the Santa parade.

Christmas trees and decorations become symbols of new life in us and in the world.

All that tinsel appears simply as indicator of Mystery.

The truth is there beyond the plastic holly and the large man in a red suit.

It's with the schoolgirl who plays ‘Good King Wencelas' on her recorder.

Everything about the season is a reminder of the gentle touch we know as call.

Although call comes in many ways, it always has a connection with Mary and the angel Gabriel.

This is what Christmas is about.

Man and woman alike, we are asked to become pregnant with God.

And to give birth to Christ in the world.

• Joy Cowley is a wife, mother, grandmother, great-grandmother and retreat facilitator.

A Jewish woman described her father keeping the rabbi talking at the door, while mother and children pushed the Christmas tree out of the living room and into the garage.

Another story came from a man who had been six years old when his parents announced that Santa was coming early on Christmas Eve with their presents.

They would all see him!

When Christmas Eve came, the boy could not contain his excitement. Santa Claus was beginning his journey around the world at their house! How good was that?

Late afternoon, anticipation turned to anxiety when Dad said he had to go out to get fuel for the car. The boy protested. "You might miss Santa!"

"Don't worry. I'll be back in time," his father said.

He didn't come back.

There was a knock on the door, a loud "Ho-ho-ho!" and Father Christmas came in with a large bag of presents to place under the tree.

Mum and Grandma talked to the big man , but the boy could not say a word. He kept looking out the window.

His father had missed the biggest evet of the year.

When Dad came back the boy was tearful. "You said you would be here!" he accused.

"You promised me!"

His father consoled him as best he could, and the boy stopped crying. He sat on his father's knee and described details of Santa's visit, the white beard, the red suit with the fat stomach, the parcels in the bag.

"Guess what, Dad! You're not going to believe this. Santa has exactly the same watch as yours!"

Stories like these keep me from getting grumpy about the commercial aspects of Christmas. Are they really as bad as we sometimes make out? Or have we just outgrown the magic?

Maybe I don't go as far as wanting to ban Santa and Christmas trees, but I do tend to limit Jesus to a manger.

At my age, Christmas celebration is two tickets to Handel's Messiah, midnight mass, and Christmas dinner with family.

As for the add-ons, when I feel an attack of "grinchness" coming on, I go back to memories of childhood when Christmas pudding, a stocking hung above the fireplace, a fat man in a red suit, were all somehow connected to God.

It's the child view that Santa Claus, reindeer, Christmas trees, every bit of tinsel, fit neatly into the manger with baby Jesus.

Maybe Jesus would say, "Of such is the kingdom of heaven."

• Joy Cowley is a wife, mother, grandmother, great-grandmother and retreat facilitator.