Soup and Human Kindness to Warm the Night

It is a bitter night on skid row. The Catholic Worker soup van pushes against a numbing December wind. The sun is at its farthest in the heavens. It is the month of the deepest dark and the cruelest cold. It is winter solstice.

The van edges down 5th Street. A homeless man struggles against wind and rain to secure plastic sheeting around his cardboard bed. His hands are red with cold, his clothes drenched. Rain runs thick on the sidewalk, soaking the cardboard. Cars swish by on their way to family and friends, warmth and Christmas cheer. The man is near despair.

Economists warn retailers of a grim Christmas this year. Misery and trouble have always occupied skid row. Devoid of easy solutions, City Hall pulled up stakes seven weeks ago, promising neither food nor shelter but a “cleanup” of skid row in the new year.

With passionate bureaucratic thoroughness, convoys of skip loaders, dump trucks and squad cars will roam the area throughout the day, removing all evidence of the desperate lives lived on its concrete sidewalks.

The human misery of skid row is an unsightly mess. Ragged men sleep cradled in urine-stained doorways and makeshift shanties. They eat rotting food dug out of restaurant trash bins and wear the same smelly clothes each day. They fight, drink and defecate in public view. They are not pretty to behold.

The soup van moves through skid row with its simple gifts of soup, bread and human warmth. The poor wait in the cold darkness.

Centuries ago, before there was Christmas, winter solstice, as now, was celebrated on Dec. 21. After the harvest was gathered, animals slaughtered and the deep freeze of winter lay across the land, homes were decorated with mistletoe, laurel and holly. Yule logs were burned, candles lit and mince pies prepared.

Winter solstice celebrated the returning of the sun, source of light and life itself. The Christian church, having no recorded date of the birth of Jesus, chose winter solstice, celebrating a profoundly deeper event than the rebirth of the sun or the lengthening of the day.

Ancient belief held that for one brief moment the sun stood still as it turned on its course toward the new year. Families sitting down to Christmas dinner will pause to remember the hungry, the homeless and the absent. A sign has been given to us. Be among the poor and wet and cold and despairing. There is Christmas.

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Alice Callaghan, an Episcopal priest, directs Las Familias del Pueblo, a nonprofit community center in downtown Los Angeles.