Destitute Experience Christmas Spirit in Downtown Los Angeles

“Merry Christmas. Hats off please!”

It was a greeting repeated hundreds of times Saturday by men in dark suits signifying passage from a world of filthy concrete and predatory faces to a sanctuary of warm food and loving care.

Outside the Midnight Mission in downtown Los Angeles hundreds waited in lines that wound over cardboard boxes, spilled food and drinks, and mounds of the detritus accumulated by the skid row homeless: a children’s line to the south filled mostly by Latinos; an adult line to the north of mostly African American men and women.

Inside, volunteers from churches and community groups across the city lined up in the board room awaiting their turn to help.

“Do any of the young ladies want to serve?” called out managing director Clancy Imislund, a former advertising executive who has been at the helm of the Midnight Mission for 26 years.

“Apron, hat,” he instructed the two young women who raised their hands. They received their freshly pressed linens from another volunteer and were ushered into the kitchen.

“I could use two more busboys,” Imislund said.

In the basement, an assembly line of volunteers and staff wrapped boxes of presents.

There was a lighthearted disarray to the proceedings on the street. The men in dark suits--many residents of the mission who are enrolled in a work program--passed out tickets for the lunch. But when they found women who had waited in line with their children for more than an hour but did not have tickets, they let them through.

As word of the gift giveaway spread, many families, not all of them indigent, came from far away.

The staff asked no questions.

“We don’t ask,” said Tony Anthony, a former employee who returns to help out at Christmas. “They need it, they don’t need it. We’re missionaries.”

The Christmas spirit on skid row brings cultures together in a strangely anonymous way.

Two blocks away, a caravan of cars pulled to a stop down the street from the Union Rescue Mission.

A woman jumped into the back of a pickup truck and began to wave articles of clothing as a crowd appeared.

“Socks,” she said, and hands went up. She threw a folded pair to a woman who turned to inspect the offering. “Hey lady,” the woman in the truck called out, and threw a pair of jeans.

A man named Dennis, one of a dozen or so who are part of the caravan, said they’re an Alcoholics Anonymous group.

“We’ve been doing this for six or seven years,” he said. “For a lot of us, we do it as much for ourselves as for them. It kind of reminds us where a lot of us came from.”

And yet another culture was evident inside the Union Rescue Mission.

There staff members wore yellow T-shirts instead of dark suits.

The kitchen was larger and more efficient. The lines were shorter and moved faster. Instead of presents, there was entertainment. The choir of the Friendly Temple Missionary Baptist Church belted out gospel songs.

There also was an air of sophistication not present at the Midnight Mission. A publicist gave information packets to visiting television crews, and staff directed those who were shy to a “media-free” zone in the cafeteria.

But whatever the differences, the basics were the same. Both missions serve more than 3,000 meals on Christmas Day. That’s a good third more than their daily patronage.

And both missions observe one item of decorum with force.

Just like the men in dark suits, security guard Timothy Williams frequently repeated the mantra of the sanctuary:

“Hats off until you’re on the street, gentlemen.”