About this event
The emmanuel Christmas Fair & Festival
Emmanuel means ‘God with us’. Today!
On December 29-31, 2020, a host of Christmas-lovers are coming together to celebrate together with an online festival and fair.
Many today feel listless and alone, or crushed by pressure. This event is a little way to share the Christmas spirit with each other, to share stories and traditions.
We donate $1 from every purchase for this event
It’s a little way we can spread good cheer with families in the Holy Land
- Buy this conference for $25 to keep watching afterward, and get the live panel replays
- For every $25 pass, we donate $1 to Select to Give
To become gift is to give meaning to life…
“[Jesus] did not change history by pressuring anyone or by a flood of words, but by the gift of his life. He did not wait until we were good before he loved us, but gave himself freely to us.”
Pope Francis, 2019 Christmas Homily
Welcome Letter from Dominic de Souza
Dear Christmas-lover,
Celebrating Christmas is the one feast the makes me feel like a 5 year old. It’s not about the gifts.
It’s about everything. It’s the gifting culture of Christmas. How each of us does little things to celebrate life and goodness. Like music, food, gatherings, friendship.
The early Christians stunned the world with their culture of Christmas, their warm and welcoming homes.
This is what happens when the Kingdom of God breaks through, buds and flowers in our world.
Everyone loves the idea of Christmas, even if they don’t ‘get’ the Christ within it. And that’s what we’re coming together to celebrate with ‘The Emmanuel Fair & Festival’.
It’s not just to celebrate a moment in history. Or to have happy thoughts about Heaven. It’s to realize something very real is happening now:
Christ has entered our sacred pilgrimage, and trudges alongside us, asking for our help to scatter life and love in the darkest places.
Often it doesn’t feel so sacred. It feels boring. It feels terrible. For many, it feels like a lonely lockdown.
This makes me think of Bethlehem, when a different lockdown forced strangers into strange places, and made them wait. The little people of the world paused together, wondering what would happen next.
Then, like now, Christ slipped in through that sliver of silence, as a tiny child. And he never left.
We no longer sing ‘O Come Emmanuel’, like the ancients. We sing ‘Emmanuel’, God with us. Now and forever.
This event is not an invite to try to ‘out-Christmas’ the next person.
It’s a call to
- Look at where we are, who we are, and what we have.
- Accept that many things are not as we would have them.
- Celebrate on behalf of many who don’t, or can’t.
We are gifted another year. We are gifted each other. And we are gifted Christmas.
However weakly or poorly it is celebrated, it is still strong enough to bring a smile, spark a sense of hope.
God is the great gift-giver, the lord of Christmas, and the hearthfire that warms the whole world.
We must allow ourselves to be filled with joy, so that when others see us, they are inspired to ask, ‘What is the answer to the joy within you?’
It is the joy of Christmas!
I hope you’ll join us, browse the Christmas fair, and spend the time you can with your loved ones,
And remember, the world needs what you have to give.
Merry Christmas,
Dominic de Souza
Founder of SmartCatholics
Meet the Sponsors
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