The following is a Southern Cross article by Christina Bagaglio Slentz. Slentz is the (San Diego) diocesan Office for Life, Peace and Justice’s associate director for Creation Care Ministry.
The days grow dark earlier and earlier, and we long for the light. God’s gift of creation again reflects and repeats the truth of our relationship with our Creator. This anticipation builds during Advent as we wait for Christ, the Light of the World, to be reborn among us. But how do we celebrate this joyous occasion in harmony with this gift? Here are a few ideas for you and yours.
Truly ‘Greening’ Your Church & Home
Skip the overload of plastic, single-season items and fill your holiday home with the beauty of God’s creation. Deck the halls with real boughs — use natural branches, pinecones, dried fruits, nuts and sprigs of berries alongside candles and ribbons. Revitalize family decorations passed down from older generations, search for gently used items in thrift shops, and take good care of the new decorations you purchase, so they will last longer. Consider splurging on a reusable Advent calendar instead of buying plastic-heavy “throw-aways” each year. You’ll save money in the long run. Finally, opt for LED Christmas lights, which last longer and use less energy.
Sustainable Gifts
Shopping in advance can be key to avoiding last-minute purchases that don’t fit or aren’t desired. WARNING: Returned clothing will be sent to a landfill as it is less expensive for companies to toss than re-rack items. For your bookworm? Find a signed copy of a (used) book by his/her favorite author. Trying to please grandkids who have it all? Give an experience — tickets to a sport or cultural arts event — in lieu of a physical gift. What about those hard-to-shop-for grandparents? Rally all the cousins and make a video with your favorite app featuring old family gathering images and messages of love. The value will be priceless. Want to put a bow on your green giving endeavor? Save your brown paper grocery bags for wrapping your favorite things and tie them up with string
Eco-friendly Christmas Activities
If you are crafty, try your hand at making your very own ecological Advent calendar. The Internet abounds with ideas for repurposing decoratively painted paper rolls to package daily sweets.
Also, try these environmentally-friendly actions that can add meaning to Christmas:
1) Make Christmas cards for a retirement community.
2) Pick up trash in your neighborhood.
3) Decorate your Christmas tree.
4) Set out food for the birds.
5) Watch a Christmas movie with your family.
6) Support a local toy drive.
7) Have a Christmas music dance party.
8) Go for a walk to look at the Christmas lights.
9) Volunteer at a local food bank.
10) Have a Christmas baking day.
11) Make cards for your teacher, coach, crossing guard, etc.
12) Deliver treats to your neighbors.
13) Visit or reach out to a distant family member.
14) Grocery shop for a food bank.
15) Go for a hike.
16) Go caroling.
17) Call or text a friend with a holiday message.
18) Read Christmas books.
19) Wrap a present for your pastor.
The Reason for the Season
Catholic Social Teaching calls us to care for creation because the earth, our common home, is God’s gift to all humanity. In this season of gift-giving, our response to this gift is our gift to God. Therefore, each intentional, eco-friendly action is like a small prayer, reflecting our gratitude and keeping us mindful of the real reason for the season — Jesus.
From The Southern Cross.
Some dioceses and groups in the Church have become pathetic self-parodies depicting a disemboweled Catholicism.
This is not what Jesus died for.
Why so preachy about care for creation but not a peep about opposing the LGBT agenda?
We all know why.
odd…with the exception of specifically themed activities, things on this list are things people I know do pretty much every week of the year…
Oh, the banality of it all! Ms. Slentz’s plomping platitudes wouldn’t earn her a place at the Christmas dinner table in the corner with the kids. BTW: I’d love to know what the Diocese of San Diego pays its intellectual midgets. I’m off to set out food for the birds.
We always watch the best Christmas movie ever: Die Hard.
Die Hard has lots of profanity and violence. John McLane has to wash out his potty mouth with soap by the end of the film.
Cruel and unnecessary comments by psuedo-Christians
Says the liberals whose nonsense decimated the Church in past 60 years…
Not liberal. Traditional and biblical.
Liberals hate both the bible and tradition.. they are enemies of the Church…
Sigh. The banality and bloat of the bureaucratic church.
So the Diocese of San Diego not only has a Director of Creation Care Ministry but also an Associate Director? Why so many bureaucrats? Does this article justify her keeping her job? Afraid not.
Nary a mention of any prayer activities for individuals and families. Even the pachama cult would have a prayer for their idol “plantings” in the ground. Maybe a family walk to a church to prayer under a sacred canopy. they’ll always have the canopy of the woods and ‘sacred trees”.
No such cult exists, .
It is not an exhaustive list.
But honestly, you should examine your conscience.
oh it exists it was on clear display in Vatican gardens 2 years hosted by Bergoglio
‘no such cult’ , just google “pachamama rituals” and you will find extensive websites giving guidance on how to perform pachamama rituals. I wish they didn’t exist. Just a bit ago latin american news reported rescuing a child in a box that was about to be buried as an “offering” to pachamama, aka, a sacrifice. the ritual is called a ‘despacho’ where you make the offering to encourage P-mama to make a deal for the favor you want. I’ll try to find that again and report back.
I will pray for their conversion.
Dr. Taylor Marshall’s fake stunt in orchestrating the theft and disposal of the Pachamama statues, intended to publicly embarrass Pope Francis, is now well-known to have been the trigger, the last Trad straw that convinced Pope Francis to issue Traditionis Custodes, restricting and eventually eliminating the TLM.
Trads are unstable and threats to church unity.
“.. is now well-known to have been the trigger, the last Trad straw that convinced Pope Francis to issue Traditionis Custodes,,,” Well-known? It is a poor comment on the pope’s stability as a person to ascribe to him such peevishness. Or are you claiming that this papacy is guided in part by real or imagined affronts to his office?
Taylor Marshall was right about Pachamama, but he is not always right, and he says so. I do not think that goat’s head in the middle of the White House Christmas scene is a Behemoth. I do not see a satanic upside-down star on its forehead, and it just seems to be a cultural thing, like a reindeer, but Behemoth ornaments are sold with the innocent looking little Christmas goat ornaments on many websites. That is most confusing as one is evil, while the others seem innocent enough.
Stealing from a church is not a good thing.
They were not Pachamama idols.
They don’t become Pachamama idols because the Internet declares them to be.
Correction to last post: Taylor Marshall was talking about Baphomet, not Behemoth which is another name for a demon.
It blows my mind how people fall for stuff like that.
It is well known that American trads, their opposition to Pope Francis, their support of Trump are the reasons why Pope Francis clamped down on the TLM.
No.
Hey, Amigos!
This ain’t the Catholic Church.
It’s a bad imitation of the Sierra Club.
Abortion is a grave evil.
There is nothing evil in this.
You showed your true colors-everyone who criticized this.
Forgive us for not ‘attaboying’ the list…but there is a certain amount of ‘reduction fatigue’ we’re experiencing from the culture let alone from several quarters of the Church. There isn’t an item on that list that a well meaning atheist in good faith does not do. But we’re Christians and it’s Advent and we’re just so sick and tired of people that should know better reducing salvation history to what is available from the local Elks Club or Rotary….just so tired…
The assumption is that you know salvation history although the way Americans do Christmas is not very reverent to Christ.
There is something profoundly annoying about being smarmily told by Someone in Authority that you, you unwashed little person, really should be doing something you have already been doing for years. Betrays a pathetic ignorance of the average parishioner’s life, not to mention maturity and intelligence. Woke clericalism by proxy.
That is pride.
Doesn’t anybody know the Catholic Faith anymore?
There are two types of people who support Democrats: billionaires and idiots. Check your bank account to see which type you are.
Pastors prefer cash rather than wrapped gifts.
This was written by a mother with young kids. You really don’t have to do any of this stuff.
Advent is the difficult season with the whole world doing Christmas.
If Catholics would just live the faith, it would all take care of itself.
I like “Go for a walk to look at Christmas lights.”
I think they live on Catalina Island.
Maybe that makes sense there.
In other areas, it is dark and cold, maybe with snow and ice and the houses can be a quarter of a mile apart.
I dilegenly recylce the Southern Cross as soon as I extract it from my mailbox
Can we talk about the woman in the pic? I know that pic didn’t accompany the story in The Southern Cross, but the pic is worthy of discussion.
Here we have an attractive Gen-Z female, of marriageable age, all by herself with a giant tub of popcorn, ready to watch a movie by herself on her sofa. Her home/apartment is meticulously decorated for the “holiday”. She has a beaming smile as she points the remote control at the TV, prepared to stream her favorite show.
That’s the fantasy and lie that the media and liberal Democrats want you to believe. That these young single women are happy. Happy with consumption, happy with the trappings of a holiday without company. Happy without a man. Happy being alone.
The reality is that many, many Gen-Z women are lonely and miserable. They want to find a good man to marry but can’t.
Or it is a young mom who got her kids to bed after a day of decorating and is sitting down to watch EWTN with a tub of unbuttered, unsalted popcorn that she is going to string for garland on the tree. And all those presents are going to the Angel Tree.
I have no explanation for the lobsters on the Christmas tree.
If you look CLOSELY,
you will observe that is NOT
a T.V. remote.
It is a Remote Control for her
uber-compliant, submissive
Robo-Husband. She opened her Christmas present early.
And tossed the old Carbon-based hubby in the Recycle Bin.
No wonder she’s smiling !!!
Unmarried women vote for Democrats at rates of like 80%. Married women support Democrats only at rates of about 40%. Democrats have a vested interest in ruining the nuclear family.
A woman with that slim figure is not going to eat that much popcorn.
What? Haven’t they heard the intercessional prayer, “Good St. Anne, bring me a man as fast as you can.” It worked for one of my relatives, she got a gem of a man (husband). On one website a younger woman said the priest told her to say that prayer because that was the way his mother met his father. He also told the woman to pray that God was preparing a man for her like St. Joseph, pious and good.
No. I never heard that prayer.
Irrespective of whether one has
heard of this prayer or not – it’s a “damn” good prayer!
Whatever happened to “Thy Will be done”?
Whoa. For a second I thought I was looking at the Babylon Bee. Of course, we should care for the environment, God’s creation, of which we should be good stewards. But, this kind of stuff is ridiculous and laughable. Who’s attracted to a church that sounds like middle schoolers (no offence intended to middle schoolers), the NEA, a teen magazine, confused Joe and the Democrats, Hollywood and the dying and confused Methodists and Episcopalians?
Are these Cardinal virtues in San Diego County?
It is one article in a newspaper. Sheesh.
We can walk and chew gum at the same time. A lighthearted suggestion to take the kids for a walk around the block to see house decorations doesn’t mean that we can’t also say our evening prayers. Taking food to the food bank doesn’t mean we can protest public sin. Being a good Catholic doesn’t mean we have to be grouchy all the time, or walk around town with our heads down in supplication. Etc. Etc. Christmas is a time to be joyful, and welcome the newborn King.