The Holy Father's Christmas Gifts

For his first Christmas as pope, Benedict XVI gave all Vatican employees signed Christmas cards and gifts of Italian cake, sparkling wine and rosaries. The Vatican's 4,223 employees Dec. 14 each received a colorful Christmas postcard depicting a reproduction of a 16th-century painting of "Adoration of the Magi." The painting, crafted by an unknown artist, hangs in the chapel of St. Lawrence in the Vatican. On the card's reverse side is the pope's coat of arms and a greeting -- a quote in Latin from a sermon of St. Augustine in the pope's handwriting."Awake mankind! For your sake God has become man," it says, followed by Pope Benedict's signature and the year. Together with their cards, Vatican workers also carried home a large Italian Christmas cake called "panettone" and a bottle of Martini sparkling wine, gifts Pope John Paul II used to give employees every year along with his own hand-signed Christmas card. But this year Pope Benedict also included a special set of blessed rosary beads whose metal center bears a "Madonna and Child" on one side and his coat of arms on the other.

If you could receive a personal gift from the Holy Father, what would you ask for? What Christmas gift would you present to him?
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