CHRISTMAS PRAYER

Lord Jesus Christ You are the Son of God and Son of Mary. You are our brother, our friend, and Saviour of all peoples. Fill our hearts with joy as once again we celebrate your birth at Bethlehem. Open our eyes so that we may see you in the people around us. Open our lips so that we may speak words that are kind. Open our hands so that we may be others. Bless us this Christmas. Amen.

TRANSITION YEAR CHRISTMAS CARDS

Sales of this year's Christmas Cards, designed, produced and packaged by the Transition Year Students are brisk. All proceeds from the sales will go to a number of different charities. Well done to Ms. Kealy, Ms. McQuaid and all of the students for their great work.

TEACHERS HONOURED BY PRESIDENT

St.Aidan's teachers Richard Keane and Paul Ward have been presented with the Civic Merit Awards by the President, Mary McAleese. Richard and Paul received their Awards for establishing and running the Presidents Awards Scheme (Gasice) in St.Aidan's. For more information see www.p-award.net

(Left to right): Paul Ward, Site DeValera, Junior Minister, Dept. of Education, Moira Leyden ASTI, President McAleese and Richard Keane.

WHITEHALL SOCIAL SERVICE COUNCIL

Once again our school is collecting food for the Christmas food collection and we anticipate that our students and their families will be as generous as in past years. This collection brings home to us the true sprit of Christmas.

STUDENT COUNCIL

The student council has been very successful in the past few months. They have organised some very special events. The first event was the 'Battle of the Bands'. This show was held on the 17th of November in the hall. Five bands performed, all competing for a prize of six hours in Temple Bar's recording studio. The winners were a group called Arch Angel and they will be recording their album during the Christmas holidays.

The other event that the student council organised was a very successful Table Quiz'. This was held in the GPA on the 24th of November. This was a great night for everyone. We got great support from everyone in the school and people in the local area. We had a full house with 23 tables taking part. The winners got €100 vouchers for Jervis street shopping centre and the runners up got &eurp;40 vouchers.

We would like to thank all those who helped organise these events and who also took part and supported them. The student council raised over €1000 and will be giving money to certain clubs within the school and also to local charities before Christmas.

SPONSORED WALK AND SILENCE

Our sponsored walk and silence to raise funds for the two Zambian Missions and the South African Street Kids was a great success. Well done to all first, second and third years who took part and raised the much needed money.

We would like to thank all our St. Aidan's retirees who gave their time to came back and help us on the day. A special thanks to Frank Welsh for his contribution to making this event the success that it is. Frank plans to visit South Africa in February and he will see first hand how our contribution is being spent.