Holy Family continues Christmas meal tradition

Holy Family Catholic Parish, located in Oakmont, Plum, and Verona, has a tradition of sharing a meal on Christmas morning with those who may be alone during the holiday.

The parish was still able to share the gifts of the season with 233 people, even though covid caused a change in the brunch menu and venue. Twenty parish volunteers met Dec. 22-24 at St. Januarius Church in Renton to prepare brunch packages of pastries, fruit and packaged foods such as oatmeal, macaroni and cheese, peanut butter crackers, raisins, cereal cups, soup, and trail mix. The package also included a candy cane, a Holy Family Parish calendar and a Christmas card made by children in the parish religious education (CCD) classes.

A total of 55 Holy Family parishioners from all five churches in the grouping took time away during the busy days before Christmas to help make the package delivery possible. In addition to assembling and delivering the packages, other volunteers delivered the brunch marketing flyers to local food banks, senior citizen high rise apartment buildings, and senior centers; purchased the package items; managed the reservations; staffed the Grab-N-Go; and managed the traffic flow for the Grab-N-Go pickup.

Twenty-four of the volunteers delivered the Christmas brunch packages on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day to 192 homebound people in Verona, Penn Hills, Oakmont, Monroeville, Garden City, Apollo, New Kensington, and Plum. One of the volunteers who delivered the brunches told us about her experience delivering to an elderly woman who lives alone. “With tears in her eyes, she said she couldn’t believe the church would do such a generous thing. She couldn’t thank me enough. I’m glad I was able to be part of this wonderful ministry.”

Forty -one packages were available on Christmas morning for Grab-N-Go pick up at St. Januarius. A recipient called the day after Christmas to say she was so pleased with all the goodies she received and wanted to thank the delivery person, as well as the committee who put it all together.