Precious Blood’s goal: Lose the ‘Happy Holidays’ greetings

“It’s OK – Wish Me a Merry Christmas” are the words printed on the buttons worn by many members at Precious Blood Catholic Church, and showing up more and more on the collars of many coats and sweaters around town.

The buttons are sending a positive message to the community and to retailers. That is one of the reasons the youth and other members of Precious Blood are selling them.

They also are a fundraising tool for the youth group WorkCamp mission trip in 2009.

Loretta Cummings, youth volunteer and leader of the Work Camp next year, was looking for a fundraiser on the Internet to raise money for the mission trip next summer. She found the Web site, wmamc.com, ordered a few buttons, brought them to the youth group as a fundraising idea and left it up to them to decide if they were interested.

The youth supported the idea 100 percent.

Cummings is excited about the response from the community. “We wanted to do something small to remind people that it’s ok to wish others a Merry Christmas,” shares Cummings. “We have had a very positive response,” she adds, “we see people wearing them all around town.”

They (members) started out selling car magnets as well as the buttons but the car magnets sold out almost immediately. They have already bought 200 buttons, after reordering once already, and have only 30 left. Cummings points out that, “the message is positive and not disrespectful of anyone’s religious beliefs.”

The focus of the Wish Me a Merry Christmas Campaign is to move away from the “Happy Holidays” greeting and instead encourage a return to the traditional “Merry Christmas” greeting. The National Campaign has caught on and the folks at Precious Blood Church are on board.

The youth group has set a goal of raising $10,000 to send 15 youth and some chaperones on the 2009 WorkCamp mission trip in Winchester, Virginia. On that trip, the youth will join other teens from other churches, and help make repairs to homes providing safer and drier shelter for one hundred families. These families cannot afford to, or are unable to, do these repairs themselves.

Other fundraisers are planned to help raise money for the mission trip such as a teen raffle and a spaghetti dinner. Cummings says they plan to have one fundraiser a month through June to help offset the trip costs. Kelly Bennett, youth minister at Precious Blood, says this fundraiser has been very successful, “buttons are flying,” she adds proudly.

As for purchasing a button, just ask Bennett. You can see her on Sundays at church but you can’t see her coat, it’s covered with buttons. “If people don’t want to see them all over me, then they’d better start buying them off me,” informs Bennett. As long as they are on her coat, she says, they (Precious Blood) will sell them.

Amy Wagner covers church news for the Star Exponent. Have a story idea? E-mail her at .