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Our Ward is having a one hour sacrament meeting on Christmas Day — are you going, or are you staying at home that Sunday? Our family is discussing it. In years past, we went without exception as Christ is what Christmas is supposed to be all about, so went the logic. We are bandying some other ideas around….I am thinking of going to a Church up the street with the whole family just to try something new. Any thoughts on how to make the day special, with some kind of befitting Christian focus, while breaking the routine a bit?
We’re going. One hour, mostly the ward choir. The men are even doing a hymn…we’ ve been practicing for the past 5 weeks during opening exercises. We’re going. We have an excellent Bishop; there is strong musical talent in the ward (including a newly created youth orchestra); my wife wouldn’t have it any other way – and neither would I, honestly. I really do love my current ward, and that makes a huge difference.
We’ll be going as a family. We also will have extended family over for dinner. It will not be a day of rest, but I’m looking forward to a good holiday and sharing the Christmas spirit with others. We’re going to midnight mass at the Catholic cathedral here in Logan. cwald wrote:We’re going to midnight mass at the Catholic cathedral here in Logan.
We’ve done that for years — although never in logan. I enjoy when the church celebrates the high mass in place of some of the more modern equivalents.We are also going to sacrament meeting only on sunday late morning. After I was released as choir director after 21 years of it, my wife started going to choir.
I prefer the music and silence over the spoken word.
We went to an Episcopal Church this afternoon (Christmas Eve) to their Eucharist with Children’s and Cherub Choirs & Bells. We have gone 3 times in the last 4 Christmases, simply because we enjoy the pomp and ceremony. They are almost as formal as the Catholics with processions, and recessions, incense, bells, pipe organ, readings and congregation responses as they told the Christmas story from the book of Luke. The church is not large, but is in the style of the grand old Cathedrals with lots of rock and stained glass. My wife and I had talked about going to a Baptist service that has the reputation of being good, this evening but logistics got to much. Also my wife was getting cold feet, because some of their promotions reminded her to much of the hard core dogma of her childhood. She converted to Mormonism in her 20’s. We will be attending Mormon services tomorrow, and our ward is having only Sacrament meeting. The other 2 meetings were canceled for Christmas.
We are going to play it by ear and if we make it, we make it. Nah, not going. No particular reason. I have done the Catholic high mass thing in the past sometimes. Where we used to live near Atlanta, our friends across the street were devout Catholic. The wife sang in their amazing choir (they actually traveled to Rome on year to sing for the Pope). We usually went to their Christmas event.
I went this morning! A wonderful session! Their were quite a few Christmas songs sang by the choir! Have a merry Christmas, everyone! We went today and it was just the right length….a wonderful Christmas gift from the Church… I really enjoyed our service today. Four people spoke about “My Favorite Christmas Memory” (each for only about 5 minutes) – and they all were simple, service-centered and very touching. There was a special musical number after each talk – two by our really good ward choir and one with our Bishop playing “What Child Is This” on the violin accompanied on the piano by one of the older women in the ward who doesn’t play much but obviously loved playing that number. We ended with Silent Night.
It was a good way to celebrate Christmas.
Our Bishop was away, and our First Counselor invited all primary children to come up and sing the first verse of Silent Night — unprepared. Not protocol to do impromptu stuff like that — but it was a glimmer of light for me — the children all perked up, and were involved in the meeting. the Primary music person was there ready to show them the words in a kind of paper-based teleprompter. I thought that was a step in the right direction. My son perked up! I went to the Unitarian service this Christmas. It was really nice. I found out that the preacher’s family has been Unitarian since before Mormonism existed. ! There weren’t many people there (at all).
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