Christmas Project: 2000

Life is Sacred

The second phase of the Mother & Child Campaign was launched at the end of November 2000. It was a special Christmas Campaign following on from the Lobby for Life Campaign which was so successful the previous July, August and September. The Christmas Campaign asked the Irish people to turn their thoughts to Irish mothers and babies and emphasised the importance of a pro-life referendum to absolutely ban abortion.

Christmas Campaign

In the weeks leading up to Christmas (2000) the Mother & Child Campaign launched a Christmas Card Campaign. The intention of this campaign was to remind people of the continuing importance of protecting our mothers and babies from the horror of abortion.

We designed a beautiful Christmas postcard with a picture of Our Lady and the Child Jesus on the front and a pro-life message on the back asking people to remember mothers and babies this Christmas. A similar full colour poster was designed to send to every parish in Ireland for display during the Christmas period. We were delighted with the response of parish priests to the poster and the cards and posted an extra 100,000 cards to parishes the length and breadth of the country on request.

These pro-life Christmas cards were handed out at every street session in the month of December and were very well received by the general public. It was great to see so many shoppers coming back for more so that they could include them with their Christmas cards - bringing the real meaning of Christmas to the frenzy of spending.

In the midst of the Christmas shopping rush, M&CC members went to the major shopping centres and handed this important leaflet out to the thousands of shoppers passing through. The campaign also went outside churches in Dublin and around the country, and our sincere thanks to people nationwide who helped us distribute so many of these cards.

This Christmas message was not just appropriate, but essential, and of particular relevance is the need to provide clarification with regard to the deliberately created confusion surrounding essential medical treatment and abortion.

Christmas Card

200,000 Christmas Cards were distributed nationwide around the Christmas period of 2000. It had a picture of Madonna and child on the front and a message on the back asking people to remember mothes and children around Christmas time. The Card was so popular that people included them when sending out their own Christmas cards. A Christmas Card with a difference.

Christmas Poster

A full colour poster with a similar message was also sent to every parish in the country and many priests phoned the office to order tens of thousands of the pro-life cards to make them available to those attending Mass during the Christmas.They were also erected in lots of shops, shopping centres, halls and other venues.

The card and poster were published for several subseqent Christmases.