Letters

Christmas Gifts

Posted

What I most recall about Christmas as a child was going to Midnight Mass with my parents. Hearing all the beautiful Christmas carols and seeing Baby Jesus in the crib with the Blessed Mother and St. Joseph at His side made me feel protected and loved. I guess that is how Baby Jesus must have felt at His own wondrous Birth. 

Now that I am much older, I recall in a special way the words of the late Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen, who in the Christmas special of his television series,  “Life Is Worth Living,” would explain to his viewers that one cannot separate Mary from “Merry Christmas” because Mary stands for merry, and it was Mary’s “yes” that gave Christ to the world, and it is Christ who gives us Himself, “manna from heaven,” the Eucharist, at every Holy Sacrifice of the Mass. The good bishop would end his Christmas special with a reminder that when we say Merry Christmas to think of Mary, Christ and Mass. 

Christmas was beautiful to me as a child, and it still is now because Jesus, the Light of the World, the Prince of Peace has come—Merry Christmas.

Rosaria Incantalupo

Staten Island