The Knights of Columbus has long championed the “Keep Christ in Christmas” message to remind the public that the “holiday season” is really about the birth of the Savior. Each year, the more than 17,000 local K of C councils promote the message with car magnets, yard signs, television ads and radio spots. This Christmas messaging has been going on for decades.

Back in 2010, I wanted to create a 30-second broadcast commercial with this message, but we had no production budget. I found a beautiful mosaic image from the Knights of Columbus Incarnation Dome at the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception in Washington, D.C. The year before, I used that image to create a billboard we placed alongside Interstate 94 in Racine County, Wisconsin.

For the TV spot, we planned to use that still image with a pan-and-zoom effect, but I still needed voice talent and music. I looked no further than my then 11-year-old daughter, Ruby. She only needed a couple of takes to nail the script voiceover. My other daughter, Samantha, then 14, took to her keyboard and recorded a section of “Greensleeves.” That is the tune used for the hymn What Child Is This?

Once I put it all together, we had a very nice broadcast commercial, quite beautiful in its simplicity. The finished spot ran hundreds of times on a wide variety of cable television networks throughout the Archdiocese of Milwaukee.

This beautiful message is needed ever the more in 2025 than it was 15 years go. A secular and increasingly anti-Christian society makes it all the more important to boldly speak the faith and proclaim the coming of the redeemer of mankind, the King of all creation: Jesus Christ.

My daughters’ simple, elegant presentation was and is a perfect complement to the reality that God so loved the world that he sent His only Son through Mary, the Ark of the New Covenant, into the world to save men from their sins.

This Divine rescue mission, envisioned from all eternity, continues today. Welcome Him into your hearts. Ask Him for the faith to truly understand the mission of the Redeemer. For more than two millennia ago, a Child was born and placed in a manger, in Bethlehem the “House of Bread.”

Jesus the Bread of Life beckons all to follow him, worship Him and be one with Him through Holy Communion: the Body, Blood, Soul and Divinity of Christ. He is really and truly present in all of the tabernacles around the world, and wherever/whenever Holy Mass is offered.

I am a third-generation Knight of Columbus. In my time as grand knight of Racine Council 697, Captain of Fourth Degree Assembly 1207, and a founder of Racine Council 15659, Christmas projects were always close to my heart. Whether delivering gifts to children whose families could not afford them to helping erect a Nativity creche on Monument Square (see photos above), they all remain precious memories.

Merry Christmas, indeed.

Check out the television commercial below.

©2014-2025 The Hanneman Archive

A version of this post was first published in November 2014