The following is the 2011 Christmas message from Archbishop Richard Smith, president of the Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops.

Stars give us a sense of direction and brighten the night. In the Book of Genesis (22:17), they are also a sign of God’s blessing. They herald God’s promise to Abraham that his and Sarah’s descendants will be countless. In the Book of Numbers (24:17a), a star is again a sign and promise of what is to come: “I see him, but not now; I behold him, but not near — a star shall come out of Jacob, and a sceptre shall rise out of Israel.”

TORONTO - Marianne Moroney wants justice on the streets of Toronto — justice that can deliver a simple, cheap, satisfying meal. As executive director of the Toronto Street Food Vendors’ Association, Moroney has been fighting city hall for the rights of Toronto’s hot dog stands.

“City councillors have set out purposely to strangle this industry,” Moroney told The Catholic Register.

Moroney is a tenacious and tireless advocate for the mostly poor, mostly immigrant hot dog sellers of the city. It’s an endless and thankless task, but she derives her inspiration from a deep instinct for communion and her attachment to the Eucharist.

“Libera nos a malo” is usually translated “Deliver us from evil,” but the Latin word “libera” can also mean liberation.

The fundamental Christian desire to be free comes from the Lord’s Prayer. But a Toronto university professor claims it’s also a good way for a Catholic to understand Hindu theology.

At the University of St. Michael’s College, Reid Locklin has just published Liturgy of Liberation: A Christian Commentary on Shankara’s Upadeśasāhasrī. It is an academic look at the small but influential Advaita tradition in Hinduism.

TORONTO - During a trip to Bangladesh, Angela Grace Macri watched with her daughter, Mary Anne, as Bangladeshi mothers taught children the lessons they learned at the Amarok Society’s “Angela Women’s School.”

It’s a school named after Macri, the 2011 Toronto Catholic District School Board Alumni Award winner.

Macri says helping to educate girls through her volunteer work with the non-profit Amarok Society borrows lessons learned about her Catholic faith from her parents and her teachers at Toronto’s Loretto Abbey High School.

TORONTO - Christmas has not been banished to churches and pious homes. Commercial Christmas may be everywhere — bigger, brighter  and louder than any tale of how Christ came into the world — but the insanely jovial Santas and blizzard of inane holiday songs on the radio are not the end of the story.

There are Christmas creches in businesses, out on the street, in offices, in all kinds of places around the city.

At Casa Manila in North York the only thing owners Rizalde and Mila Cuachon need to evoke the birth of Jesus is a star — or a couple dozen stars — hanging from the ceiling of their restaurant. The traditional Filipino parol is a lantern made from bamboo and Japanese paper. It evokes the star that led magi to Bethlehem. The Cuachons’ collection of parols joyously declare, “Christ is here.”

Markham, Ont. - When you arrive at the Patton home in Markham, there’s no mistaking that Christmas is coming. Not only are visitors greeted by a Nativity scene on the front lawn and a manger scene on an entire side wall, inside the house are more than 900 crèches.

Nativity scenes are a passion for Gwen Patton. She has some 450 of them on the main floor. They’re everywhere — in the living, family and dining rooms, the kitchen and along hallways. There are another 450 or so in the basement, with a few scattered in bedrooms.

Patton knows the story behind each one of them. Asked to name her favourite, she’s reluctant.

Mississauga, Ont. - It will be a special Christmas for the family of Dina Al-Sammak and Fawaz Fatohi; their son, David, turns a year old this Christmas season, which marks the family’s two-year anniversary in Canada.

Like many Catholic families in the multicultural Greater Toronto Area, the family will be celebrating with Christmas Mass and family get-togethers, integrating some of the cultural traditions of their Iraqi homeland into the festivities.

Before being sponsored as refugees by Mississauga’s St. Dominic Catholic Church in 2009, Al-Sammak says attending Christmas Mass and celebrating with family in Baghdad were luxuries they could not participate in because of the post-war violence in Iraq.

Christmas ornaments featuring a kneeling soldier and the words “Never Alone/Jamais Seul” are being sold in a campaign to raise awareness of Canada’s new war veterans.

The campaign is run by Jane Twohey, a Military Christian Fellowship of Canada volunteer from Port Perry, Ont., northeast of Toronto.

Twohey wants to commemorate the service of Canadian soldiers and chaplains serving in missions around the world through the Christmas ornaments.

WASHINGTON - Pope Benedict XVI's trip to Cuba in the spring will have multiple layers of meaning for the church and for Cuban society, said a U.S. archbishop who pays close attention to Cuba.

The pope will go there as a symbol of peace and hope, as a pilgrim participating in "a springtime of faith," and as part of the church's efforts at creating the climate for a "soft landing" for the country to come out from under 50 years of communist rule, said Miami Archbishop Thomas G. Wenski in a Dec. 14 interview with Catholic News Service.

A glance at the mantle this time of year can give the average Catholic entirely the wrong idea about the Bible.

“You see creche scenes — they cram everything from both Gospels (Matthew and Luke) in there, not realizing that if you line up both those Nativity stories there are inconsistencies and contradictions,” said Jesuit New Testament scholar Fr. Scott Lewis. “Don’t try to mix the four Gospels together. Then you just get a meaningless glop.”

The popular mash up of sentimental baby imagery found everywhere from creches to Christmas cards to movies on TV is a problem for priests preaching on Christmas morning, said St. Peter’s Seminary Scripture professor Fr. Richard Charrette.