Children at Holy Cross School in north Belfast begin their Christmas holidays tomorrow snowed under with goodwill greetings from all over the world.
In the past two weeks the 220 primary school girls at the school received over 10,000 cards and gifts from well-wishers in virtually every part of the globe, school principal Ms Anne Tanney said last night.
Ms Tanney said that some of the children and parents were still traumatised after the loyalist protests, but that they took great comfort from the international response they had received.
She explained that the names of the individual children were available on the Internet and that as a result Christmas cards had started flooding into the school in the past couple of weeks.
"I think each of the children would have received about 50 cards. Many also received little gifts such as jewellery, and some even got twenty-dollar bills in the cards," she added.