SORTS
By Fr. Bernard Basset, S.J.
Three Months Too Soon
IT seems absurd to be writing about
Christmas preparations in September but the commercial Christmas will soon be with us and we do not want to he two steps behind. Each year since the war the campaign to show the crib has been growing and if after reading this, you start planning early, this year should be the best. At Christmas more than at any other time we have contact with our neighbours for millions who now are drifting into paganism still retain affectionate memories of the oldtime Christmases and still love carols and the crib.
Christmas bards
THE Young Christian Workers are once more putting thirty different
Christmas Cards on the market, prices ranging from threepence to eighteen pence. Last year 150,000 cards were sold, mainly through the efforts of the sections who went round selling them from house to house. The Y.C.W. offer special terms to shops, Write to the Secretary, 106 Clapham Road, S.W.9, for details if you have no Y.C.W. section in your town.
C.A.G.O.
THE Catholic Action Girls Organ isation is also on the warpath with a splendid variety of Christmas Cards. Their prices range front twopence to fivepence with a set of nine for three shillings. Like the Y.C.W., C.A.G.O. distribute its cards by personal effort and welcomes any assistance ib this work. Write to Catholic Action Girls Organisation, 22 Bramham Gardens, S.W.5.
The Grail Crib
LAST year the Grail introduced their cardboard crib for sixpence, so designed that it could stand fittingly on the mantelpiece. 200,000 cribs in two colours are now ready, costing only sixpence each. As the crib is 10 inches by 7 inches, this seems a very reasonable price, These cribs may be had from the local branch of the Grail Or by writing to the Secretary, 58 Sloane Street, S.W.
The Christmas Stamps THE Christmas Stampe. six of them
and highly coloured are to carry the message of Christmas in a new way. Each costs one penny arid may be bought in books of thirty for half-a-crown. Stick them on letters and parcels to show the crib to friends at home and abroad. As you know, the stamps have a double apostolate for they will also help to finance the ten-foot posters of the crib. Stamps may be had by writing to D. J. Murphy. Ltd., 19 Charing Cross Road, W.C.2. Do please help with this.
The PQsters
TF every Catholic bought one stamp
or if every reader of All Sorts purchased a book of them, then our troubles would be over and six thousand posters would appear in the streets. As last year. the cost of a poster and the hiring of the hoarding for a month is £2. Churches, hospitals. schools or anyone who has or could erect a hoarding. can have the poster for very much less. This would he an excellent undertaking if you have a suitable site.
Christians and Peace
FEW Catholics if any will want to support the Christian rally for peace, to which I referred on September 7. when they know that among the speakers at one eq. their meetings will be a man who, in addition to being a leading antiPapist, actually reported approvingly the outrageous trial of Cardinal Mindszenty for the Communist Daily Worker. Another person who occupies a similar political position was, 1 learn, among the sponsors of the campaign.
Tailpiece
SPACE has all gone and this Christmas information has excluded other news. There is just room for the remark which I overheard in Oxford Street yesterday when a very polite man raised his hat and said to his neighbour " Excuse me but could you tell me, Am I in a queue?"