The head of the Roman Catholic Church, Pope Francis, has rebuked those that are extremely hungry for wealth and power to the detriment of others while asking them to imitate the Christian deity, Jesus Christ, who according to Biblical records, was poor during his time on earth.
Recalling Jesus’ birth in a stable, Pope Francis rebuked those “ravenous” for wealth and power at the expense of the vulnerable, including children, in a Christmas Eve homily decrying war, poverty and greedy consumerism, Associated Press reports from the Vatican City.
Christmas is an annual Christian festival, held on December 25 in most parts of the world, including Nigeria, celebrating Jesus Christ’s birth.
In the splendour of St. Peter’s Basilica, Francis presided over the evening Mass attended by about 7,000 faithful, including tourists and pilgrims, who flocked to the church on a warm evening and took their place behind rows of white-robed pontiffs.
He drew lessons from the humility of Jesus’ first hours of life in a manger.
Francis said,
“While animals feed in their stalls, men and women in our world, in their hunger for wealth and power, consume even their neighbours, their brothers and sisters,” the pontiff lamented.
“How many wars have we seen? And in how many places, even today, are human dignity and freedom treated with contempt?
“As always, the principal victims of this human greed are the weak and vulnerable,” said Francis, who didn’t cite any specific conflict or situation.
“This Christmas, too, as in the case of Jesus, a world ravenous for money, power and pleasure does not make room for the little ones, for the so many unborn, poor and forgotten children,” the pope said, reading his homily with a voice that sounded tired and almost hoarse.
“I think above all of the children devoured by war, poverty and injustice.”
American rapper, Meek Mill is set to provide some relief to less privileged families in his hometown of Philadelphia by donating over N200 million ($500,000) .
According to TMZ, the ‘All Eyes On Me’ hitmaker is planning to hand out a huge sack full of gifts for families in need this weekend and these gifts will include things like bikes, video game gift cards, laptops, tablets, and dolls.
Meek incorporated some of his friends in this plan, among them Patriot’s owner Robert Kraft, his managers at Roc Nation, and Sixers partner Michael Rubin.
The Hip Hop artiste will be handing out the giveaways on Sunday and is expected to do the deliveries personally while meeting his fans.
TMZ further reported that he will also donate an additional N12 million to a local project that’s being run by a volunteer organisation that helps families during Christmas.
The UK is getting into the Christmas spirit earlier than ever, judging by the music we’re buying and streaming.
Mariah Carey’s festive hit All I Want For Christmas Is You returned to Spotify’s Top 40 last Sunday – a full two weeks earlier than three years ago.
The song also reappeared on the iTunes chart on 2 November, and is currently among the UK’s Top 50 downloads.
Carey is expected to re-enter the UK’s official chart on Friday. The song is already at 63 in the midweek countdown.
A re-entry would give All I Want For Christmas Is You its 100th week in the top 100, and mark the song’s 14th consecutive year on the chart.
The return of Carey’s hit is a bellweather for the start of Christmas season.
Behind her in the Spotify chart are six more Christmas songs, including The Pogues’ Fairytale of New York and Michael Bublé’s It’s Beginning To Look A Lot Like Christmas. Between them, the songs have more than 500,00 daily plays.
However, the UK lags behind countries like Estonia and Iceland, where listeners start shuffling their Christmas playlists in October, according to Spotify data.
They are all beaten by The Philippines, where Christmas music accounts for 2% of all songs streamed by early September.
Listeners in Lichtenstein, meanwhile, are the most ardent consumers of seasonal songs. In the last few days before 25 December, almost 70% of all listening is exclusively Christmas music – triple the global average.
The UK puts up some stiff competition, though. Not only are we listening to festive hits earlier every year, but Magic Radio launched its 100% Christmas station in August due to consumer demand.
Not to be outdone, Amazon Music has just released a stocking-full of exclusive Christmas songs on its streaming service, with Justin Bieber covering Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree and Mary J Blige taking on Wham’s Last Christmas, amongst others.
The race for the Christmas number one is also shaping up, led by Children In Need’s charity cover of Oasis’ Stop Crying Your Heart Out.
The all-star song features vocals from Cher, Kylie, Robbie Williams, KSI, Ava Max, Jess Glynne and Bryan Adams, amongst others, with the video set to premiere during the Children In Need telethon on Friday.
BBC Sound of 2020 winner Celeste is also vying for a festive hit, after soundtracking the John Lewis Christmas advert with her new single, A Little Love.
Inspired by the kindness shown by the British public during lockdown, it is the first original song (ie non-cover version) to feature on one of the retailer’s adverts. Proceeds will go to the charities Home-Start and FareSha.
For the last two years, YouTube personality LadBaby has topped the festive charts with pastry-themed cover versions like I Love Sausage Rolls and We Built This City (On Sausage Rolls).
The star, who donates his earnings to the Tressell Trust food charity, hasn’t announced his plans for 2020. If he scores a third consecutive Christmas number one, he will equal a record set by The Beatles, who were the stars atop the festive countdown in 1963, 64 and 65.
Speaking to Radio 1 last year, LadBaby said he would only attempt a third record if the right idea came along,
“I don’t want it to become a joke,” he said. “It needs to still be funny and it needs to still be right. I don’t want people to start boycotting it next year if we go for it.”
But Mariah Carey’s All I Want For Christmas Is You is the gift that keeps on giving.
First released in 1994, it’s an upbeat, catchy tribute to the Christmas hits of Motown and Phil Spector. A top three hit on both sides of the Atlantic, it quickly became a standard, with the New Yorker calling it “one of the few worthy modern additions to the holiday canon”.
After selling more than 16 million copies, it finally topped the US charts last year, on its 25th anniversary, making Carey the first artist to score a number one single in four different decades.
“We did it!” exclaimed the star on Twitter, adding emojis of a crying face, a heart, a lamb, a Christmas tree, and a butterfly (her signature), for good measure.
Carey co-wrote the song with longtime collaborator Walter Afanasieff, who originally worried it was too basic. But that’s exactly the quality that has made it such an enduring hit.
“The oversimplified melody made it easily palatable for the whole world to go, ‘Oh, I can’t get that out of my head!” he said in an interview with ASCAP.
Writing in her memoir, Carey said the song’s opening chimes are meant to evoke the “little wooden toy pianos, like the one Schroeder had on Peanuts”.
Although she was unhappy at the time, dealing with the pressures of fame and a tempestuous relationship with her future husband Tommy Mottola, she wanted to “write a song that would me me happy and make me feel like a loved, carefree young girl at Christmas”.
“I wanted to sing it in a way that would capture joy for everyone and crystallise it forever,” she added. “Yes, I was going for vintage Christmas happiness”
Student Covid tests for Christmas holiday from 30 November
Covid tests for students in England, so they can go home safely for Christmas, could begin on 30 November, according to a letter from the universities minister to vice chancellors.
A week of mass testing for students is proposed – running between 30 November and 6 December.
The letter, seen by the BBC, promises a fast turnaround for tests and “results within an hour”.
The aim is to stop students spreading the virus as they return home.
The first week of December, after the lockdown ends, could then become the “travel window” for many students to leave university for the Christmas holidays, with face-to-face teaching expected to finish earlier than usual this term.
But those who test positive will have to take another test and, if found to be infectious, have to stay in isolation.
Larissa Kennedy, president of the National Union of Students, said: “The government have finally listened to our calls to ensure that students can travel home safely for Christmas.
“We particularly welcome this mass-testing approach as it equips students with the knowledge to make informed decisions about travel ahead of the winter break,” she said.
‘Huge hurdles’
But the University and College Union, which represents university lecturers, said it was not yet clear whether all universities would take part in the testing programme or how many students would be included.
“There are huge hurdles to overcome to manage this process,” said union leader Jo Grady.
Around 1.2 million students are expected to move at Christmas from their university term-time address to a home in another part of the country, where there might be different levels of infection.
This has raised concerns among the Sage scientific advisers of a “significant risk” that this migration could spread the coronavirus.
To prevent this danger, plans are being made for mass testing using so-called “lateral flow tests”.
These nose and throat swabs are self-administered, with no need for tests to be sent to laboratories for results.
image captionThe tests will be able to provide results within an hour
The letter from Universities Minister Michelle Donelan, and its accompanying documents, says: “The tests we are deploying have a high specificity which means the risk of false positive test results is low.
“Although the test does not detect all positive cases, it works extremely well in finding cases with higher viral loads – which is those who are most infectious.
“As the test is easy to administer and does not require a laboratory, testing can take place on a very regular basis,” the letter to university leaders said.
Free testing kits
Accompanying documents show a planning timetable in which sites are prepared for testing from 15 November, ready to operate the following week, with “pre end-of-term testing” between 30 November and 6 December.
The test kits will be given free to universities, which will have to provide a place for the tests to be carried out, in a way that can process thousands of students within a short time frame.
Ministers have already indicated that universities will stop in-person teaching two weeks before the end of term – so when students have been given the all-clear they could be expected to leave their term-time address and go home, in a “test and release” process.
This could mean that by about 9 December, many students will have left for Christmas.
There are also believed to have been discussions about how the departure of students can be made safe – such as co-ordinating staggered times for leaving between universities in the same city.
There could also be calls to avoid public transport – with suggestions of chartering coaches or using private transport, such as parents collecting students, and creating “travel corridors” to control traffic away from universities.
University leaders have previously raised concerns about why this guidance has been left so close to the end of term – and there will be questions about the capacity of universities to be ready in time for the mass testing.
There have also been questions about whether students will return as usual in January or whether there will be a staggered start and more testing, or whether more courses will switch online with some students initially studying from home.
Universities UK welcomed the plans for more testing capacity, but warned that universities would “now need clear assurance of the effectiveness of the tests as well as further details from the government on specific responsibilities under the proposed scheme including the governance, indemnity, resourcing and costs recovery”.
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