Serve Like a Superhero: Season 3, Episode 5
Saints were the superheroes of the medieval world. So this Christmas on Serving Stories, we remember one of these saints, remembered each Christmas for his compassion, generosity, and willingness to forsake his own comfort to provide for someone else in need. The saint we are talking about is remembered in a carol as Good King Wenceslas.
In actual fact, Wenceslas was not a king, but a Duke in old Bohemia (now part of the Czech Republic) in the 10th century. He was well-known for his kindness and generosity to the poor. One of his early biographers wrote about him:
“Rising every night from his noble bed, with bare feet and only one chamberlain, he went around to God’s churches and gave alms generously to widows, orphans, those in prison and afflicted by every difficulty, so much so that he was considered, not a prince, but the father of all the wretched.”
Cosmas of Prague
The English carol about “Good King Wenceslas” was taken from a book of children’s stories about saints by the hymnwriter John Mason Neale in 1853. It tells how Wenceslas, looking out his window on the day after Christmas, noticed a poor man gathering sticks for a fire. After asking where the man lived, he went himself out in the snow, along with his page, to bring the man food and fuel. When the page became cold pushing through the snow, Wenceslas invited him to follow in his own boot prints, and he would find himself warmed. The carol ends:
Therefore, men and women, be sure,
John Mason Neale
grace and wealth possessing,
you that now will bless the poor
shall yourselves find blessing.
In this week’s episode, we discover how many volunteers in cities all over the world are walking in Wenceslas’ bootprints in this Christmas season. Having noticed people less fortunate than themselves out their windows, they are sharing generosity at some cost to themselves. Our primary story focuses on Serve the City Berlin, and a massive gift distribution to more than 2000 refugee children, but we also visit four other STC cities—Amsterdam, Dublin, Eldoret, and the Virginia Peninsula—to see what generosity looks like in those places.
Serving Stories host Ani Deal and sound designer/composer Parker Deal were together recently in the USA, and they recorded “Good King Wenceslas” together! (The reason their voices blend so well is that they are brother and sister!) You can listen to the whole carol below.
Christmas Generosity
Serve the City Berlin (Germany)
Our principal story in this episode features Serve the City Berlin, where over 100 volunteers, including employees from eight different companies, packed over 2400 Christmas packages for refugee children in 23 Berlin shelters. The gifts were designed for different age groups in consultation with shelter leaders, and distributed at the various shelter Christmas parties. That’s a lot of generosity!
Pictured above is STC Berlin City Leader Christine Thumm, along with Core Team member Melinda Means, packing Christmas gifts in the space generously made available to them every year by a local refugee shelter for this project. This is the tenth year STC Berlin has served refugee children in this way.
This episode centers on a particular day when the volunteers wrapping presents not only included employees of a recruitment agency but also elderly people in a retirement home. The corporate volunteers, a team of 11 from Kummer Consulting, had the generosity to transport all the materials to the home so that the residents could also take part in the project. William Whittenberg, a member of the STC Berlin Core Team, acted as Serving Stories’ roving reporter to interview the participants (in picture at left).
Two of the residents, Frau Alin and Frau Fank, allowed William to interview them. We were struck that some of these elderly residents had some commonalities with the children for whom they were wrapping gifts: they had experienced war and loss during their childhood.
In putting together the script for the episode, producer Shannon Deal recruited the help of a German friend, Ulrike Truderung, to translate the interviews. Ulrike also had some insights that might not have been obvious just by reading the transcripts. If you are interested to follow this conversation, you can read the transcript of it HERE.
If you want to hear some other stories from STC Berlin, listen to Humility: Mopping Mayors and Stumbling Stones and Serving Stories – Episode 1.3 – Berlin, DE.
Serve the City Amsterdam (Netherlands)
Serve the City Amsterdam demonstrated generosity to undocumented families living in the city by inviting Amsterdammers to create a “Reverse Advent Box.” Normally, you take 24 gifts for yourself from an Advent box, but in this case people were invited to put in specific items from their own house to make it possible for someone else to celebrate Christmas. Above, you can see some of the donated boxes; at right is the “Reverse Advent Calendar” list.
If you want to find out more about the “Reverse Advent” initiative, check it out HERE.
Volunteers in Amsterdam also served children living in refugee shelters by distributing presents to them for Sinterklaas (St. Nicholas’ Day), on December 6. This is the traditional time when children in the Netherlands receive their gifts during the holiday season.
If you want to hear some other stories from STC Amsterdam, listen to Environment: Gotta Clean Up This City! and Hope: Everyone’s Got Talent!
Serve the City Dublin (Ireland)
Ronan Coffey, STC Ireland director (standing at right), told us about a project of generosity extended to the elderly and disabled clients of STC Dublin who over the years have been helped through DIY and decluttering projects in their homes.
In conjunction with employees from the French power company EDF, volunteers packed boxes full of Christmas goodies: cookies, chocolates, chips, and Christmas crackers, among other things. But the most important addition to the boxes was a handwritten Christmas card, personally addressed to the client. For some of the recipients this might have been the only Christmas greeting they received this year. Below are volunteers and EDF employees with some of the fruits of their labors.
If you want to hear other stories from STC Dublin, listen to Compassion: A Hundred Thousand Welcomes and COVID Kindness – Episode 1 – When Irish Eyes Are Smiling.
Serve the City Peninsula (VA, USA)
STC Peninsula also chose to show generosity to elderly clients with whom they already had a relationship. Every month, volunteers go to play bingo with residents at Spratley House and Ash Manor, two low-income senior living facilities. At left, Cindy Hahne, STC Peninsula City Leader, oversees the packing of gift bags for residents, including handmade white boards that volunteers wrote positive messages on.
After packing the bags, volunteers went door to door to personally deliver their goodies!
If you want to hear some other stories from STC Peninsula, listen to Love: Kindness Wherever You Look! and Humility: Mopping Mayors and Stumbling Stones.
We also interviewed STC City Leader Leah Ngugi from Eldoret, Kenya. Her “Good King Wenceslas” project is making tortillas for street people, which will take place Christmas Day. If you want to hear a story from Eldoret, listen to Stand Up to Villains.
