On the first day of temples, my Nelson gave to me . . . renovation in Salt Lake City.
On the second day of temples, my Nelson gave to me . . . two vaporware ones1
and renovation in Salt Lake City.
On the third day of temples, my Nelson gave to me . . . three in the Congo
two vaporware ones
etc.
On the fourth day of temples, my Nelson gave to me . . . four near Mexico City
three in the Congo
etc.
As part of the Church’s “Light the World” campaign this year, they released a set of images for people to share. One of them was a modified version of a painting of Mary and baby Jesus that had a number of edits made. See below to see the original and the modified versions. (I’m not sure who to credit for noticing this or making the comparison image. I’ve seen it mentioned in a bunch of Facebook groups and I think on the Mormon Reddit, but I’m not sure who made the original observation.) In honor of the covering up of any hint of Mary’s cleavage in the edited version, I’ve rewritten the song “Mary, Did You Know?”
Mary, did you know that your wicked breasts
Would cause good men to stumble?
Mary, did you know that your sinful chest
Made men’s composure crumble?
Did you know that your cover up
Would save men’s souls from sin?
These parts of you were secretly, morality’s linchpin
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.
The Polar Express
A young boy is surprised to discover a train stopping right next to his house on Christmas Eve night. He learns that it’s going to the North Pole, so he boards it and finds it packed with children. Hot chocolate is being served, but the boy, remembering his study of D&C 89, righteously turns down this evil hot drink. The train rushes through forests and up mountains and finally arrives at the North Pole, where a
huge throng of elves is waiting for Santa to bestow the first gift of Christmas. The boy is chosen to be the recipient of the gift, and Santa tells him he can choose anything he likes. Eschewing the contents of Santa’s gigantic bag, the boy chooses a small stone that is sitting on the seat of Santa’s sleigh, because the stone appears to be glowing with a strange light. The boy is devastated to find when he returns to the train that the stone has fallen out of his pocket. Fortunately, Santa slips it in with the gifts the boy opens on Christmas morning. Sadly, though, the glow has disappeared. The boy thinks of putting it in a dark place, such as an upturned top hat, to see if any glow remains. He is delighted to discover that not only does it still glow, but it shows letters in sequence that make up a message. Thrilled, he transcribes the message and finds that it repeats over and over “Be sure to read your scriptures.” The boy’s friends are able to read the message too, but as time passes and they age, one by one they lose the ability, but for all his life, the boy is always able to see it.
When I was a kid, I was deeply confused by the lyrics of some of the Christmas carols that I heard or even sang. For example, in the chorus of “What Child Is This?”, this line got me stuck:
Haste, haste, to bring Him laud
Laud? What the heck is laud? I remember wondering if it was a long-ago time, and since food wasn’t as abundant as it is now, maybe what Baby Jesus needed to have brought to him was lard. Not that tasty, but it would keep him and his family alive for a while. Also, I reasoned, perhaps people were just singing the word with some kind of weird affected accent.
Another song that caused me confusion was “The First Noel.” This line in particular:
Was to certain poor shepherds in fields as they lay
For the longest time, I thought that the word certain here was a verb, and this was some as-yet-unknown-to-me usage that meant “to make more certain.” So the angel appeared to the shepherds, who were in doubt and fear, and the angel reassured them to make them certain that all would be well. I admit that I’m still kind of disappointed at its actual meaning, where it feels like a filler word. Like, was it really important at all which shepherds heard the news of Jesus’s birth? Not really. It could have been any old shepherds. Or people of any occupation, really. The important point is just that the birth was announced. It’s not like they were the certain Wise Men who came from the east or anything. So it wasn’t really certain poor shepherds. It would work just as well to say random poor shepherds. I still like my childhood interpretation better. I imagine that we all like shepherds have need of being made more certain, and an angel comes down and provides that certainty.
Twas the night before Smithsmas, when all through the house
Not a creature was stirring, not even a mouse;
The manuscript sat on the table with care,
In hopes that the translator soon would be there;
The children were nestled all snug in their beds;
While visions of stick pulling danced in their heads;
And mama in her ‘kerchief, and I in my cap,
Had just settled our brains for a long winter’s nap.
When out on the lawn there arose such a clatter,
I sprang from my bed to see what was the matter.
Away to the window I flew like a flash,
Tore open the shutters and threw up the sash.
The moon, it was casting a pillar of light,
And I shielded my eyes from the heavenly bright
When what to my wondering eyes did appear,
But a self-propelled sleigh with four men drawing near
I suspect that a message that most human beings absorb growing up is that we should exercise some caution in our love. That love is always a risk, that it opens you up to being vulnerable, that you can get deeply wounded if you get too drawn in by love’s currents and run into troubled waters. That the people whom you love the most are also the ones who can hurt you the most. So we learn to hesitate, to look before we leap, to take care, to think in advance about what might go wrong. Sometimes we may let ourselves get swept up in it despite all this, an experience which can be both giddy and terrifying. But we also often build walls, sometimes as thick as we can make them, in hopes of protecting ourselves from getting too invested, from caring too much.
Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer
Ostracized by his family and friends because of his freakish red nose, Rudolph the reindeer runs away to the Island of Misfit Toys. While there, he learns about the Unwritten Order of Things and realizes that even though Santa’s secret Reindeer Handbook explicitly says that nose color doesn’t matter when reindeer are chosen to pull his sleigh on Christmas Eve, what this actually means is that nose color conformity is absolutely essential. Armed with this knowledge, Rudolph decides to undergo a painful operation to permanently change the color of his nose. He is welcomed with open hooves when he returns to his family and friends, and he secures a coveted spot on Santa’s reindeer team.
I love Christmas carols. In a typical year, I start listening to Christmas music by October at the latest, just to make sure I can be sure to enjoy it fully by the time Christmas actually rolls around. So it makes me sad that we have space for only 14 Christmas hymns in our hymnal. It’s not a big surprise, given that it’s not a lengthy hymnal1 to begin with, but it’s still unfortunate.
I thought it might be an interesting exercise to consider which of the 14 I might be willing to give up, and which ones I might like to add to take their place. Perhaps I’ll even think of an extra few to add in case we one day get a super-sized hymnal. Read More
Nearly a decade ago I was a missionary, serving for three weeks in the Provo MTC before moving on to a smaller MTC in Latin America for the remainder of my Spanish language training. While I was in Provo, Sister Cheiko Okazaki (1926-2011), the former first counselor of the Relief Society General Presidency, came and spoke to the Sister missionaries. (I was sad, after hearing her, that the Elders had not been invited as well.)
I have always loved Sister Okazaki’s thoughts. In her books and public speaking, she quotes often from the Bible. Her advice that day in the MTC was both practical and inspiring, a discussion of dealing with feelings of inadequacy and hypocrisy, of “putting on Christ,” and of navigating the need to forgive ourselves and others on our journey. It was filled with metaphors from scripture about clothing and Christian discipleship. Read More
What meetings does your ward or branch typically hold when Christmas in on a Sunday? Do you have all three hours of meetings, or just sacrament meeting? Or is there some other arrangement? Read More
As we’re sure many of you are already aware, Janet of FMH is spearheading an effort to buy animals for those who need them through Heifer International. Her post, with further details, can be found here . As she explains, you can either make a General Team Donation to Team Bloggernacle, or, if you prefer, you can set up your own page for a mere $10 administrative fee.
I will be the first to admit it. In constrast to my five Christmas-maniac sisters, I’m a Scrooge. I find December by far the most stressful month of the year, thanks to papers, finals, grading, parties, overflowing malls, cards, baking, jammed airports, stressed-out travelers, delayed and cancelled flights, and the short, gray days that inevitably kick my chronic depression into overdrive. When the holidays begin at Thannksgiving, I’m always irritable and grumpy about them. I let my husband decorate the tree, hang the stockings, put the wreath on the door, and play the Christmas music and tell him not to bother me with any of it until the semester ends. I’m not much of a shopper or a socializer under the best of circumstances, and I always spend the first weeks of December feeling too exhausted even to think about Christmas as I pull all-nighters writing papers I no longer care about and memorize paradigms and fantasize about watching Infomercials and reading nothing more challenging than soup cans. Every year I threaten to buy myself a Bah, Humbug T-shirt. Read More
Dr. Seuss got at least one thing right: music is absolutely essential to any celebration of Christmas, perhaps even the most essential element; for me, the day the Christmas season begins is the day I bust out my collection of Christmas CDs (though I admit, I often cheat and start singing Christmas music in October or November, even though I refrain from listening to it that early). This year I recently compiled a list of about 80 most cherished Christmas songs, my favorite of which is actually not a Christmas song at all but an Advent song: O Come, O Come, Emmanuel. Of course, my choices are guided chiefly by music, but this 12th- or 13th-century Gregorian chant is the setting for wonderfully gloomy, plaintive, moving lyrics, answered antiphonally in the refrain by the promise of deliverance–as one popular translation from the Latin original renders two of the verses: