Catholic Activity: Advent Charity

Save some money, use your talents, and give a gift to a poor child at Christmas. Here's how:

DIRECTIONS

With the coming of the Advent Ember Days, the thoughts of parents and children might well turn to the task of helping to provide for the poor at Christmas. Mother and older daughters might use some of their time on these days to make clothing or similar articles to be given away, while father and the boys, who like to tinker, would similarly use some of their time in the production of simple toys. The materials for all items might be bought from what parents and children have saved by means of Advent self-denial in the matter of entertainment or other luxuries.

Whether little or much results from such a home project, there would be little difficulty in finding some family upon whom the gifts may be bestowed at Christmas. And there would be no harm, surely, in having the father of the family read the Church's prayer of blessing, the Benedictio ad omnia, over them, before giving them away.

Activity Source: Your Home, A Church in Miniature by Compiled by The Family Life Bureau in the early 1950s, The Neumann Press, Long Prairie, Minnesota, 1994