7 March 2020 – the last day fans gathered at Celtic Park to see their team in action. You don’t need to attend games to be a committed Celtic fan, many live far from Glasgow and others cannot get to games for a variety of reasons, but thousands of us will not have gone so long without seeing Celtic in the flesh since infancy. We are now all armchair fans.
There are parallels in our personal lives; we are armchair sons, daughters, brothers, sisters and parents, work from home colleagues. We are not all sociable creatures; I know some who are quite happy in their cocoon, but for many, this has been a trying time in their personal lives, even more so without the ceremonies of supporting Celtic.
For me, that means getting together with three generations of the family, it gives us a common currency we can spend in each other’s market. Truth is, nothing else allows us to bond in the same way. It is not the same by text, not even close.
The family thing is all good and well, but why do you and I bond, when do we bond as the Celtic Movement? For some, Celtic speaks to our ancestry, but that’s an influence that is significantly less than when I first stood at Celtic Park. I know there are some who found us through the Lisbon Lions all those years ago. This month I met a Syrian fan. He had worked various grounds as a steward and found a home for his sporting heart in the process. I also know a born contrarian, who from the age of 7 decided the team her (cherished) father despised was the one she would follow all her life.
Whatever brought you to Celtic, Celtic has an influence on our world view, almost without exception. We are a community, formed to help the starving. The more fans you meet, the more influenced you become in adopting this core value. There is not another club in the world (unless some outfit from Gibraltar claims otherwise) that has a call to action as noble as this.
In March, Celtic FC Foundation launched its Football for Good Fund. The world changed, which had two consequences for your Foundation, there would be no badge day, no bucket collection, no mountain top huddle or arctic trek, but the needy, the lonely, the isolated and the vulnerable would multiple.
The Fund raised over £1m, £250k of which came during the Christmas Appeal phase, how this was achieved in these circumstances is difficult to comprehend, unless you consider the values of those who cherish it.
Where was the money spent? You know the kids whose parents do not have a spare penny? 2,272 of them received Christmas gifts for their children and another 376 vulnerable families received ‘an envelope’ to help them through. Another £30k was distributed through 10 children and family charities.
11 homeless charities, four refugee charities, and three women’s aid charities were also given cash. Hampers were given to vulnerable elderly and families, and toys given to organisations who know where to find kids who go without.
The Welfare State is over 70 years old but like any massive apparatus, there are cracks and limits through which thousands fall. You need to be on the ground to find those who cannot be found by policy. The Celtic FC Foundation is a chain linking those of us who have with those who have not. It is relentless in pursuing the values we were founded upon. Staffed by people who endure the delight and turmoil of supporting Celtic, but who know too well the consequences when our community cannot gather, for those who count on us for a Christmas toy.
You can be proud of these values and the community you have fortified. It will outlast all of us and will benefit more lives than you will ever know. But next year, champions again or not, those of us who have, need to do more, because the metrics are not getting better.
With or without your loved ones, take care and have a happy Christmas.
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Well done the foundation.
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SFTB @12:39
Tactics, ARE, of course important, but I agree with Neil, their importance is vastly over-rated by the fans who have never run a team or trained a squad.
……………………
Sorry got to absolutely disagree with you that the importance of tactics are over-rated. Put two evenly matched teams against one another and the team who deploy the better tactics such as executing a high press, marking individual opponents who can damage them, deploying zonal marking systems/man marking systems at set pieces increase their chances of winning. Tactics are a foreign country to the present Celtic team. This is totally and absolutely the fault of our hapless, incompetent manager who must be replaced at the earliest opportunity if we are to salvage our hopes of winning the league title.
Happy Christmas to all.
Especially to Peter Lawwell God bless him
Sobering article Paul, specially this awful year.
Totally agree.
They have allowed him the Scottish Cup. Nothing has changed, we still look terrible and will be a lamb to the slaughter at the bigot dome.
Very thoughtful article Paul.
Looking out for those less fortunate was the reason our club came into existence.
God bless Brother Walfrid.
Now if the board could just remove the name of bookmakers and alcoholic drink makers from our beloved hoops ….
BTW – “some outfit from Gibraltar” are not trumpeting their achievements at all.
This is nothing more than standard operational BS from the SMSM.
– Celtic win all the trophies
– our team can’t win any
– so sour Celtic’s milk
Recurring shame so many of our fans fall for it.
Hail hail
Keep The Faith
One night
I believe you will be proven wrong and we are not as bad as everyone is making out.
Only time will tell.
So Lenny said tactics are overrated…well he would say that eh? Mind saying something similar when i was shit at something.
PITYMEVIN on 24TH DECEMBER 2020 12:27 PM
I really hope so but honestly fear the worst.
No more work until January 4th.
Pitch is shyte
I blame Neil Lennon
Hamilton Accies struggling to get a team out for Boxing Day.
Paul67
Watching football with an empty doesn’t get any easier.
Escapism for the working person took on a wholly new significance in 2020, this can’t be the Celtic, where the pitch looks twice the normal size, nobody covering the muddy bits, never mind every blade of grass. A support left to their own devices, its football Jim! – but not as we know it.
The new diamond cutting through the bank of six didn’t really happen either, just a Frimpong byeline rarity for Turnbull’s tap in, and an old stager embarrassing Eddy’s height but no threat. Soro still wearing his untested soft slippers likes a pass forward instead of the sideways sweep when he can, and Ajer fresh from his equally ‘disrespectful’ penalty, has new confidence in his licence to dribble. A dark day when you don’t mind the next game being on plastic, we may get a good bounce away from the bobble.
Boxing day with a Celtic game should be for friends and family meeting up, pie, bovril and a late Nakamura winner sending 50,000 ecstatics sliding away across the frozen footprint. Can’t mind if we won the league that year, but I do suspect there will be no repeat feat this time round.
Football running on an empty
M.O.M Ismaila Wafougossani Soro
Drew1967 is your failing posting nonsense on blogs? 😉
Merry Christmas 🍀
One minute past midnight here in Oz, that means a very merry,
happy, healthy, Christmas to CQN’rs all round the world.
God bless you all.
H.H. Mick
It’s Christmas Eve, many facing a very different Christmas this year.
This blog will be a place of socialising and comfort for many.
Lets try and be nice and remember just because you post the same thing 3 times a day for a week doesn’t make your point better, if anything it de-values it.
Merry Christmas MM!
Melbourne Mick
Happy Christmas to you and all Celts Fown Under. 🌲🌲🌲🍀🍀🍀
Down
Merry Christmas Mick 🍀
My one and only Christmas in Oz was a roaster. 43 degrees i think, 3 tinnies and I was steamboats 🤪
Paul
A fine and timely piece
Whatever differences we as a support have – we are and always will be Celtic supporters.
God bless us all.
Great work by our community 🍀
Merry Christmas to you Paul 67 🍀
Goals league
Elyounoussi 13
Edouard 10
Christie 6
Ajeti 5
Griffiths 5
McGregor 4
Duffy 3
Jullien 3
Klimala 3
Turnbull 2
Forrest 2
Ajer 1
Taylor 1
Frimpong 1
Rogic 1
Laxalt 1
Ntcham 1
Merry Christmas to you and family MICK have a great day !!! 💚💚💚
Squire D
You sure about that. Looks to me that a few who post on here, used to be Celtic supporters, but have given up that title.
Glory hunters. Some Might Say!
A very sobering post indeed Paul.
It’s nice to hear of the Foundation doing such great work and keeping Brother Walfrid’s vision alive and yes, the next few years are undoubtedly going to me more challenging than ever. As always it will be the poorest and most vulnerable bearing the brunt but I’m sure Peter and Dermot will put some of the homeless up personally as the living embodiment of what Celtic are about. I’m sure even a nice heated driveway to put your sleeping bag on would be welcome.
Parasites
Liars
Charlatans
In the words of the one and only Shane MacGowan, Happy Christmas Your Arse!
The Big O
https://g.co/kgs/fdGSdS
”Charity is a cold grey loveless thing. If a rich man wants to help the poor, he should pay his taxes gladly, not dole out money at a whim.”
Merry Christmas MM, from a baltic, but sunny East Kilbride – I think you are about 12C warmer than here. My Oz rellies will have to wait another couple of hours for their Merry Christmas as they are over in Perth.
Ave Ave
ERNIE, that’s poor from you, wash your figurative mouth out, you never know who is reading the blog. “Pay his taxes gladly?” What a novel yet alien idea!
Ave Ave
BOURNESOUPRECIPE on 24TH DECEMBER 2020 12:52 PM
Hamilton Accies struggling to get a team out for Boxing Day.
—–
For once, we might be covid assisted. Weather on Saturday looks like it is going to be wild, wet and windy.
At this time of the year ….and this year in particular….. questions large and larger really loom and distract our minds (well..mine anyway).
The really large conundrum of the last 20 years has to be Rebus!
I always thought and still do, that Ken Stott was the perfect representation of the Hibees supporting Rebus!….BUT in real life Ken is a mad Jamtart!!!..
Now I can’t imagine myself being even a wee pretendy hun at all, but if by some twist of fate I ended up on the screen as wan of them….obviously heading down that green mile towards his electrified fate and about to repent for all his failings….thus delaying the acual switch-click by about three days…..I would have to soak it in some sarcasm and underhand stabs in the back.
Would I be sussed? That is the question.
But as for the really large question facing me at this time. As we all know it is Christmas….and yet something crucial is missing from comments, leaders, sentiments, and criticism.
How can it truly be the season of love and optimism if the embodiment of all things yule…Die Hard…isn’t on terrestrial telly..Doomed I tell ye.
Anyway …out of Bolognese sauce so better get to shops before the shelves are stripped bare.
See you all on the other side.
Whatever you believe…..JUST BE AS HAPPY AS YOU CAN BE.
Hail Hail
Matt
martim1980
beat me to it – i reckon he was/is pretty poor at impersonating a tim ;-)
no matter how bad lennie is at tactics, he’ll never be as bad at tactics as some are at supporting the tic as many on here ;-)
and as per sid1888 and shane mcg…………
bah humbug
Merry Christmas to all the Oz bhoys and Ghirls…
💚
HAIL HAIL. ..
A strange year just got even stranger…I find myself in total agreement with Ernie’s last post.
Tax Dodgers of The World Unite
‘It’s a wonderful life’
Channel 4 14.35
Jimmy Stewart CSC
Supporting Lenny and supporting the Tic are not mutually exclusive. I support Celtic.