The Church announced back in November that as Christmas falls on a Sunday this year, church will be a sacrament meeting-only affair. (The wording of the announcement actually makes me chuckle—it says “the only meeting Church members need to attend that day is sacrament meeting”—which kind of sounds to me like a suggestion that wards should still hold the second hour, it’s just that nobody should feel obligated to attend it.) Although my memory isn’t great, it appears from this Church Tech Forum discussion that they made similar announcements in 2011 and 2016 when Christmas fell on a Sunday, as well as in 2017, when Christmas Eve did. But church wasn’t consistently shortened for Christmas on a Sunday in previous years. I definitely remember attending all three hours of church as a kid in the 1980s when Christmas fell on a Sunday in 1983 and 1988, and I recall being desperate to get the boring church stuff out of the way so I could get home and enjoy my presents! I’m not sure what I was up to in 1994, but in 2005, again I remember attending all three hours of church, as my wife and I were visiting her parents. In 2010, I even blogged about the question, suggesting that maybe church should be shortened around the holidays. Maybe I should take credit for the Church deciding to listen and start doing so!
I saw Peggy Fletcher Stack share this New York Times article (This is a gifted link to the article, so you can read it even if you don’t subscribe.) about different ways Christian churches are handling Christmas on a Sunday this year. According to results of one church’s survey, the percentage canceling church entirely is up five percentage points (from 11% to 16%) since this was last an issue in 2016. I really liked this summary point from Timothy Beal, a religious studies professor who was quoted in the article:
Christmas morning and Sunday morning are sort of in tension with each other. Most people who are churchgoers think of Christmas morning not as a religious time but as a family time: stockings and brunches and staying in your pajamas until midday or later.
Anyway, considering the question again, I had a few thoughts. They don’t really hang together, so I’m just going to make a bulleted list.
- Christmas church isn’t a big deal for us because we Mormons don’t follow a liturgical calendar. We don’t have particular different services for any holiday. Not Christmas, not even Easter, the centerpiece of Christian celebration. (Well, maybe Mother’s Day.) Sure, individual wards and branches can decide on their own to have a more music-and-scripture focused sacrament meeting on or around Christmas, and in my experience, many do, but that’s up to them. There’s nothing stopping a bishop from assigning speakers to talk on the City of Enoch or the Word of Wisdom this Sunday.
- Building on the previous point, I wonder if the fact that General Conference often runs over Easter doesn’t signal that we’re not just agnostic on the idea of a liturgical calendar, but we’re actively hostile to it. Maybe it’s easy to generalize from how we ignore Easter in favor of General Conference (and I know speakers often talk about it, but Conference is clearly more important) doesn’t signal that we also aren’t that concerned with Christmas. If the Church had been organized in February of 1830, say, rather than April, and we had General Conference every February and August, would we maybe make a bigger deal out of Easter, and as a result, out of Christmas?
- My sister Lynnette loves to attend church services around Christmas, and even more so during Holy Week. Now that she’s an Episcopalian, not to mention an inveterate church-hopper, she can really get her fill. So why aren’t Mormons more enthusiastic about church on or around Christmas and Easter? Maybe what I’m really asking is why I’m not more enthusiastic. But I get the feeling I’m not alone. I wonder if, relative to other Christians, our services just aren’t as participatory or interesting in general. I feel like at the high church end of the spectrum, there are Catholics and Episcopalians and Lutherans, and they have liturgy. They have scripture readings and candles and ceremony and standing and sitting and call and response. When they have communion, parishioners go up to the front. At the low church end, churches have more exciting music, with dedicated bands, and they have altar calls where parishioners can go up and re-commit their lives to Jesus, and in some denominations, they even have speaking in tongues. I know it’s easy to slip into this stereotype, and I’m speaking from mostly ignorance, but I wonder if we Mormons are kind of stuck in a middle place where we don’t have participation of either high or low church style. We have our liturgy-like stuff in the temple, so our sacrament meetings are pretty dry.
- (A quick aside that isn’t an original thought, but I still find telling: Isn’t it interesting that we call our Sunday worship a meeting, where other Christians more often call theirs a worship service, or something similar? Meeting even sounds boring!)
- Related to the previous point, I also wonder if a larger fraction of people attending an LDS church service might not be attending out of obligation than in other Christian churches. If this is true, it would make sense that we’d want to shorten or skip church when we get the chance, like around the holidays. Here’s my reasoning, so you can tell me what I’ve missed. Catholics are supposed to attend mass consistently, but the stereotype of the Christmas-and-Easter Catholic (at least in the US?) suggests that many have made their peace with skipping out on this obligation. Protestants always have the option to slide over to an adjacent denomination if they’re not enjoying their congregation, so they’re more likely to have found a church that matches what they expect. If you’re an Episcopalian and don’t like your parish, you can check out the ELCA. Heck, if you’re in a Trumpist church and don’t like the preaching about how you need to follow Jesus by selling your goods and giving to the rich, there’s probably a not-too-dissimilar congregation that focuses on turning the “blessed” lines of the beatitudes into curses. For Mormons, though, we’re both obligated to attend and also assigned a congregation. We don’t have an adjacent congregation or denomination to go to. (Also, Christmas-and-Easter Mormons aren’t really a thing, probably because, as discussed above, we don’t do all that much for Christmas or Easter.) I think only Jehovah’s Witnesses are in the same boat as we are.
- The New York Times article linked above discusses the question of churches holding services on Christmas after having held big services on Christmas Eve. Of course this isn’t an issue for us because we don’t do anything big or consistent for Christmas Eve either.
- On my 2010 post, Ardis made an excellent comment that I hadn’t considered: If you don’t have family to gather with, the church celebration of Christmas may be the full holiday celebration. This is really the counterargument to the quote from Timothy Beal above. If you’re not celebrating with family for whatever reason, then there’s no tension between Christmas morning and Sunday morning, and maybe you’d rather have a more typical Sunday morning even when that Sunday happens to be Christmas. As a couple of General Conference speakers have recently mentioned, a majority of adults in the Church are single, so this may apply to a lot of people. And this is not even to mention people who would rather not see their families or are unable to do so because of distance. It seems like this is touching on a much larger question of how good a ward or branch is at creating community that seems especially relevant as the Church appears to be on a trajectory of reducing investment in church community. I’m not sure what the answer is in general, but it makes sense, I think, to consider how a decision to reduce or cancel church services might affect people who need the community most.
I’d love to hear what you think of church services being shortened when Christmas falls on a Sunday. Also, if you feel so inclined, please correct me where I’ve made errors in my sweeping and probably ignorant generalizations about Mormons or other Christians.
In England, the Saints attend church on Christmas, even when it’s not on Sunday, in line with their Protestant countrymen.
That’s fascinating, jpv! I wonder in how many other countries LDS Church norms follow the surrounding culture like that!
Well, here in Germany, we usually have a Christmas service scheduled for Christmas Eve, in line with all the other churches, and in accordance with the German tradition that all the presents and everything happen on Christmas Eve. This year, we also had one scheduled, but we only have a small ward, and this year everybody is either sick or travelling (hopefully not both) so it was cancelled. I felt sorry for the missionaries, who were passing out invitation cards the Sunday before, urging people to “Light the World” and invite people to the Christmas Service (not that we can compete with big Protestant or Catholic services on that day, but that’s another matter.) We’re also only having Sacrament Meeting on Christmas Day, and one hour later, too, I guess so that people can sleep in and recover from the big day. But on January the first, we’re having both Sacrament Meeting and Sunday School, again, one hour later. As the Sunday School teacher, I was the first to say, “Ugh!” and ask if we could skip the second hour on that day, too. People are more likely to stay up late celebrating New Year’s Eve than they are Christmas Eve, and the fireworks often go on until one a.m., so they will need more time to sleep in and recover, or travel before going back to work on the second. The bishop said he agreed with me as a man, but as a bishop, he had to say no.
I support Melanie about New Year’s Day. The first Sunday in January is generally the start of new Primary and Sunday School classes. That often means “promotions,” new teachers, new manuals and sometimes (when classes are combined) new classmates. The Primary manuals used to (haven’t taught for several years) include introductory activities like learning each other’s names, interests, etc. When half the class and the regular teacher as well were still out of town or otherwise unavailable due to New Year’s, this could be very awkward for substitutes and meant the teacher came back having missed out on necessary basics.
That’s a great point about New Year’s Day, Melanie and NYAnn. I can see how it would be really helpful to cut down to one hour that day too. And thanks, Melanie, for the data point on Christmas Eve services in Germany! I’m honestly a little surprised that in such a correlated church, there are such local variations allowed. I mean, surprised in a good way!
Hmm.. not entirely true jpv.. I have known some congregations organise Christmas Day services, perhaps jointly with others using the same building, or alternatively a Christmas Eve carol service. But attendance at either was not obligatory, and depended very much on the leaders involved. Our current ward did the Christmas Eve carol service prepandemic.
Not this year though, because of Christmas Day being Sunday. So far as I can recall from my youth and childhood, ant Christmas Day falling on a Sunday we only ever had a sacrament meeting. Perhaps that was a local decision.
This year, what with the more relaxed stance on music in the handbook, my daughter and I were able to join with the organ on our trumpets for the many congregational carols we had between the different elements of the Christmas story for our Christmas Day service.
One year when I was a kid, Christmas fell on a Sunday and a few weeks before, they took a vote as to whether we should have 1 hour or all 3. But the vote, while it was done in Sacrament meeting, was confined to ‘heads of household only. ‘ I remember them repeating this phrase several times. Well surprise surprise – the ‘heads of household’ (who all have a key body part in common, I’ll let you guess which one) overwhelmingly opted for the 3 hour church. Because they aren’t the ones who have to wrestle hyped-up kids into church clothes and force them to sit through 3 hours of talks and lessons that may not even have any focus on Jesus’ birth. The heads of household are sitting up on the stand, “presiding. “