Everybody looks very happy. So Santa Claus must have come to
everybody! What did Santa bring you? (Speaking to one of CTK school
children) .... an ant farm? You must have been a bad girl this year.
That’s why you got that. (Speaking to another child...)You got
something else, huh? What did you get? (Answer: Xbox) Oh-h, wow!
You’re a good boy, eh? (Speaking to a third child...) What did you
get? You’re thinking about it? What did you get? ... Stuff!... Stuff!
I think everybody got stuff today.

You know, a man in Newfoundland calls his son in Calgary two days
before Christmas and says, “I hate to ruin your day, Son, but I have
to tell you that your mother and I are getting a divorce. Well, there
was silence on the phone and then he said, “Pop, what are you talking
about?” ... “We can’t stand the sight of each other any longer. We’re
sick of each other and after forty-five years, it’s over! So you just
call your sister in Vancouver and tell her.” Frantic, the son calls
his sister who just explodes on the phone, “No way are they getting a
divorce! I’ll take care of this.” So, she immediately calls her
father and screams, “You’re not getting a divorce, Dad! Don’t do a
single thing until I get there. I’m calling my brother back. We’ll
both be there tomorrow. Until then, do nothing!” The old man hangs up
the phone and turns to his wife, “OK, Honey. They’re coming for
Christmas and they’re paying their own way!” .... These kids are
wondering what you are all laughing at!

Father Brian did a bunch of stories, old Santa stories, yesterday
at the Masses. He admits they weren’t that good, but he felt that he
needed to share them. So, I went on Google and did a few of my own
Dear Santa stories. These are from kids....

Dear Santa,
Last year you didn’t leave me anything good. The year before you
didn’t leave anything good, (Like an ant hill?) and this year, it’s
your last chance.
Love,
Alfred

Dear Santa,
I wish you could leave a puzzle under the tree for me and a toy for
my sister. Then she won’t want to play with mine.

Dear Santa,
I need a new skateboard for Christmas. The one I got now crashes too
much. Band-Aids would be OK too.

It’s really great to have fun and be joyful at Christmas, and, when
you think of the simplicity of the story, we’ve heard it so often
that sometimes you get, like many of the gospel stories, it just sort
of comes over and over and over in your head. And then you kind of
miss the point, and then, one day, you will hear something fresh in
it or something new.

Billy was seven years old, in the second grade. His school was about
to have its annual Christmas pageant. Billy was kind of a big
awkward kid, and most people thought he wasn’t going to get the big
role. He probably would have to open the curtain or do something like
that. But Billy’s teacher gave him a role and a line in the
pageant....And it was the role of innkeeper. “There’s no room at the
Inn.” when Mary and Joseph came along. So he rehearsed it and he
rehearsed it and he rehearsed it, and he was gung ho that he was
going to say the right words at the right time. The church was full
as we were for our Christ the King play, a packed church. And so,
when Mary and Joseph come in on the donkey, there they are and they
come up to the innkeeper and Billy freezes and everyone in the
congregation goes, “Uh-h-h!” Everybody is embarrassed for him. Still,
the words wouldn’t come out. He had a blank. So, Joseph tried to
help. He improvised and tried to walk over to the stable to give him
a clue. And Billy says, “Oh, what the heck! Just come to our house.
We have plenty of room!”

It’s kind of a lovely twist on that story, because so often in the
gospel of Luke, Jesus is not welcome. He’s not welcome with the
Pharisees or the legal people. He’s not welcomed by the priests, by
the establishment. When you think of it, when he goes to the country
of the Gerasenes and he gets out of the boat and there is this man
throwing himself around, who’s got the number “legion” in terms of
the devils that are within him, what does Jesus do? He has compassion
on him and he cures him. But the people in that region are kind of
unhappy because what does he do? Jesus puts all of the devils into a
herd of swine and sends them over a cliff. Well, this was people’s
economic sustenance in an agrarian society. .... “We don’t want you
around, Jesus!” So they go to take Jesus and throw him off the edge
of the cliff.

Think of the time when he is sitting there and he is drawing in the
sand, and they bring the woman who legally, according to the law of
Moses, should have been stoned. Now, I mean “stoned” in the sense of
stones, you pick up stones.... But he says, “Whoever has not sinned,
let them be the first one to cast a stone.” Jesus always sees to the
heart of the issue. He always has compassion and he sees all of the
events in great love and great joy. They want to make him king. They
want to make him the king of Israel, and he enters Jerusalem on Palm
Sunday on a donkey, but he sees through their intentions. For Jesus,
It’s not business as usual. It’s not the backroom deals of politics.
It’s not second-guessing. Jesus tells it like it is. And when he
tells it like it is, what do they do? They put him on a cross.

All the way through his experience he is rejected and lost, from the
tiny baby in his simplicity of where he came and how he came, and you
think of that innkeeper saying, “There is no room at the inn.” We are
invited to think in terms of “Is there room at the inn in our hearts
this Christmas time, and all through the year?” Jesus comes to us in
the ordinary moments of our day. Are we too busy? Are we too busy to
notice? Are we too impatient with the people around us? Are we always
too something that we cannot be there to see Christ appearing to us
in the simplest forms, in the people we live with and we love with
and we meet along the way? Christ’s face is the image of every human
heart. In that simplicity of Bethlehem, we see him in word and we see
him in sacrament, in the smallest of the species of the elements of
bread and wine. And he invites us to the table, to the banquet, and
then we are expected to go out into the world and make Christ
present. And we are going to do that right now by singing “The
Twelve Days of Christmas” which is very theological. You all know
“The Twelve Days of Christmas?” You know that it is very Catholic?

Everyone present, divided into twelve groups, joins together to sing
“The Twelve Days of Christmas,” in joyful unison! ... On the first
day of Christmas, my true love sent to me.....