Destitute Experience Christmas Spirit in Downtown Los Angeles

It was a greeting repeated hundreds of times Saturday by men in dark suits signifying passage from a world of filthy concrete and predatory faces to a sanctuary of warm food and loving care.

Outside the Midnight Mission in downtown Los Angeles hundreds waited in lines that wound over cardboard boxes, spilled food and drinks, and mounds of the detritus accumulated by the skid row homeless: a children's line to the south filled mostly by Latinos; an adult line to the north of mostly African American men and women.

Inside, volunteers from churches and community groups across the city lined up in the board room awaiting their turn to help.

"Do any of the young ladies want to serve?" called out managing director Clancy Imislund, a former advertising executive who has been at the helm of the Midnight Mission for 26 years.

"Apron, hat," he instructed the two young women who raised their hands. They received their freshly pressed linens from another volunteer and were ushered into the kitchen.

"I could use two more busboys," Imislund said.

In the basement, an assembly line of volunteers and staff wrapped boxes of presents.

There was a lighthearted disarray to the proceedings on the street. The men in dark suits--many residents of the mission who are enrolled in a work program--passed out tickets for the lunch. But when they found women who had waited in line with their children for more than an hour but did not have tickets, they let them through.

As word of the gift giveaway spread, many families, not all of them indigent, came from far away.

The staff asked no questions.

"We don't ask," said Tony Anthony, a former employee who returns to help out at Christmas. "They need it, they don't need it. We're missionaries."

The Christmas spirit on skid row brings cultures together in a strangely anonymous way.

Two blocks away, a caravan of cars pulled to a stop down the street from the Union Rescue Mission.

A woman jumped into the back of a pickup truck and began to wave articles of clothing as a crowd appeared.

"Socks," she said, and hands went up. She threw a folded pair to a woman who turned to inspect the offering. "Hey lady," the woman in the truck called out, and threw a pair of jeans.

A man named Dennis, one of a dozen or so who are part of the caravan, said they're an Alcoholics Anonymous group.