Paul Hopkins: Not driving home for Christmas

Ireland-born babies will be spending their first Christmas in homeless accommodation, as the country faces the "worst homeless crisis in living memory," according to Focus Ireland, who says there are now more than 4,600 children nationwide without abode. There are some 10,000+ adults homeless.

The worrying thing about how systemic homelessness is becoming is that we are now seeing babies being born into homelessness. On Christmas morning when children all over the world, the lucky ones that is, awake starry-eyed to see what Father Christmas has delivered, bear this in mind: for every child to whom he brings a gift, there is another child — the one that Santa Claus forgot.

Of the 2.2 billion children in the world, one billion live in abject poverty — without shelter, safe water and proper health — with 22,000 dying every day because of poverty, that's a child every three seconds, the Big Day no exception. Add to that the horrors of Gaza and Syria and you have some picture.

For the 1.9 billion children in the developing world there are: 640 million without a roof over their heads (one in three); 400 million with no drinking water (one in five) and 270 million with absolutely no access to any kind of health service.

As children clamber round the tree and tear into their new toys and you reach for the liver salts to immunise yourself against the excesses of a Christmas Eve one-drink-too-many, consider the 2.2 million children die each year because they have no vaccines.

For many it can be a slow, debilitating death from diarrhoea — a common enough, though curable, complaint for some of us enduring the festive frenzy.

As you welcome friends and neighbours who call on the Big Day, some with children in tow, ponder this: more than 13.4 million children under the age of 15 have lost their parents in the last 10 years. After their loss of parents, children often are forced onto the street, the older ones must eking out an existence to support their siblings.

As you baste the turkey and pour yourself a glass of Pinot Grigio and read the back of the label, as one does, remember this: almost one billion people, including 130 million children in the 21st century are unable to sign their name, let alone read a label.

Today, more than 128 million children do not attend school, two-thirds of them female.

When you get a moment to put your feet up and scan this paper to see which TV movie you will watch, romcom or war, about 110 million landmines lie waiting on Christmas Day for children, whose natural curiosity knows no safety bounds.

That Christmas song by John Lennon got it so wrong. The war isn't over. Two-thirds of the world's children — some 1.5 billion — live in countries affected by violent conflict, while in the past 10 years more than two million have been killed in war, another million orphaned, and another four million subjected to physical mutilation that doesn't bear thinking about.

Let us remember too, all the children who have been killed or maimed by reckless accidents and domestic and civil violence.

And remember those 4,500+ children, in Ireland right now, who have no place to call home, to necessarily hang up their stocking on Christmas Eve.

Gone somewhat is all that laughter and joy at awakening on Christmas morning.

Still, this shouldn't stop us having a great day writ large in largesse. After all, Father Christmas will have come and our turkeys will be well and truly cooked.

It's just a shame — even sad — about the ones that Santa Claus forgot. But sure he can't be expected to get around to them all, now, can he?

A Peaceful Christmas? Joy to the world? Somehow, it all jars somewhat...

FOOTNOTE: One in eight people in Ireland say Christmas will leave them in debt as they typically pay their way through loans and credit cards, with a quarter confessing that their festive spending causes endless worry.

When 4,000 Irish parents were asked by the family life website Rollercoaster.ie about this annual expenditure, one in four shows themselves to be long-term planners, putting money aside for the Big Day as early as January while a quarter, also, admits that they never manage to save for the occasion.