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Faith and Life -- a column from local faith leaders

What most tests our patience about a Christmas Tradition?
  • Source: Reverend Dawn Blundell, Epworth UMC
Faith and Life -- a column from local faith leaders

Author: Courtesy of Stan Lattin

Once per week or so, Fallon’s faith leaders offer their thoughts on faith and life. Any church or faith community of any kind is welcome and encouraged to participate. If you have ideas for topics we should write about, or if you or your pastor or faith leader would like to participate, please call Pastor Dawn Blundell at Epworth UMC, 775-423-4714.

 

If you’d like to talk more about anything you read here, or if you would like prayer or a listening ear, we hope you will reach out to one of us. If you don’t already have a church home, you are invited to join us for worship, too! You’ll find contact information and worship times below.

 

Chad Biar, St John’s Lutheran Church

Senior Pastor

In-person worship at 10:00 am; parking lot drive-in service on 90.9FM

For more info, please call 775-423-4146, or visit www.rtgfallon.com

You can call me a liturgical curmudgeon, but I’m always exhausted by the “tradition” of Christmas overtaking everything the day after Thanksgiving (sometimes the day after Halloween). Not only does it contribute to the over-commercialization of one of our most sacred holidays by reducing it to gift-giving and generic wintertime activities reflected in the music, but it’s also skipping over the entire season of Advent and its benefits of personal mediation on the coming of our Savior and why that is so significant to us in the first place.

 

Dawn Blundell, Epworth United Methodist Church

Senior Pastor

Worship Sunday mornings online at 9:30 am on Facebook Live and KVLV AM980

For more info, please call 775-423-4714 or visit www.epworthfallon.org

I am a huge fan of Christmas. I cannot tell you how many sleepless nights I have spent working to make everything *just so* for my kids and for my church. I love the creative work of bringing the wonder of Jesus’ birth to life, in meaningful and surprising ways. But...I really get impatient with the over-busy-ness of it. God knows I do it to myself...but there are just SO MANY THINGS to complete and participate in this time of year. One event and its preparation overlaps the next, and I find at the end that I haven’t truly enjoyed or even been fully present for any of it. So every year it is a discipline for me to slow my mind and heart even while the calendar remains full, and focus on the hope, love, justice, promise, and peace that Jesus brings.

 

President W. Bruce Lewis

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints
Councilor Fallon South State Presidency
For more info, please call 775-742-9040 or visit www.churchofjesuschrist.org

Christmas traditions are established by small and simple things. Steven R. Bangerter stated, "As parents, we have the sacred duty to awaken within our children passion and commitment to the joy, light, and truths of the gospel of Jesus Christ. While raising our children, we establish traditions within our home and we build patterns of communication and behavior within our family relationships. In doing so, the traditions we establish should ingrain strong, unwavering characteristics of goodness in our children that will infuse them with the strength to confront the challenges of life."

D&C 64:33  Wherefore, be not weary in well-doing, for ye are laying the foundation of a great work. And out of small things proceedeth that which is great.

The Christmas traditions that are established, in the home, will have an effect on our children throughout their life.

 

 


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Believer 12/06/2020 05:44 PM
My answer: The fact that the Bible describes the birth of Jesus as happening around a certain Jewish feast, which would not be in December. Scholars believe based on the Jewish calendar that it was more likely September. Early Christians wanted to attract pagans to Christianity, so they made Christmas on December 25, which is actually the date of a pagan holiday called Saturnalia.

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