CELEBRATING CHRISTMAS WITH EARTH & ALTAR
From the Rev. Dr. Chris Corbin and the Rev. Erin Jean Warde
Christmas is a time to have fun (note: Christmas is a time to have fun; I’ll be gravely disappointed if you’re having any fun before December 24th)! And luckily the folks over at Christianity Today have given us some suggestions for how to have that fun. Unfortunately, some of these suggestions just don’t quite work with the culture and lived realities of a lot of Episcopal Churches. But never fear! We’re here to tell you how, with just a little creativity, they can be modified to allow for a fun Christmastide, even for Episcopalians!
Get your friends together to string popcorn and cranberries while watching animated kids' classics like A Charlie Brown Christmas and How the Grinch Stole Christmas.
For Episcopalians: Classic Christmas movies are fine I guess, but wouldn’t it be much more fun to get together and listen to recordings of NPR’s coverage of A Festival of Nine Lessons and Carols from King’s College, especially during the years when Rowan was still our Archbishop?
“I’m a clergy kid and all of the Christmas traditions I grew up with were shaped by church schedules, from when we could open presents to when we could have Christmas dinner. One particularly hectic Christmas Eve, my dad had five services and no time for a big family dinner, so my mom got creative: she set the table with fancy dishes, stemware, and cloth napkins and then she went and picked up McDonald’s Happy Meals. We had more than one McDonald’s Christmas growing up and, 25 or so years later, my family and I celebrated my first Christmas Eve as a priest in the same way.”
Get your youth group to create a living nativity scene one night a week in front of your church.
For Episcopalians: Well, we don’t have a youth group. But what we do have is an endowment of $14 million for a congregation of 11 average worship attendees. So go ahead and hire a bunch of college students to perform the living nativity on your rector’s front yard instead. For extra fun, make sure to ask them all how you can get them to join your soon-to-be formed “college youth group”!
For a few laughs and a lot of fun, get together with friends to look at each other's family photos from past Christmases.
For Episcopalians: Go through old photo albums of past Christmas pageants and try to figure out which of the kids are married now, who they married, which ones are “still figuring it out, bless her heart,” where they all live now, and what’s going on with their parents. Lament those who now go to the megachurch across town.
Form a kazoo band and go caroling—no singing allowed!
For Episcopalians: Why not actually dress up like characters from Dickens’s A Christmas Carol and go around singing historically accurate carols? We all know half of the Episcopal Church only really joined to cosplay being upper-class Victorian Brits.
Pile the family in the car and drive around your town looking at Christmas lights.
For Episcopalians: Pile in the family car, but go out on January 2nd and complain about how everyone has already taken their decorations down even though it’s still Christmas for 5 more days.
Drop anonymous notes on your teachers' desks thanking them for sharing their gift of teaching with you. You may want to include a message about the greatest gift of all, Jesus!
For Episcopalians: Drop anonymous Way of Love pamphlets on your teachers' desks with a note thanking them for sharing the gift of teaching. Make sure to write in an apology for the word “evangelism.”
Make your own creative wrapping paper using butcher paper and festive stamps.
For Episcopalians: Make your own creative wrapping paper using last year’s Christmas Eve bulletins (that you have stored in a closet all year) as a part of your parish’s new green initiative.
“My Christmas tradition is writing Christmas cards, but forgetting to mail them.”
Check with your local animal shelter and see if you and your friends can help give the animals their baths. Bring red and green ribbon to give them bows when you're done.
For Episcopalians: This is neither the Season After Pentecost nor Holy Week nor a martyr’s feast nor Pentecost nor an ordination, so don’t you dare use red or green ribbon. If it’s after December 24, you may use white or gold ribbon. Before then, you better be using purple or black (blue will do in a pinch).
Go to your church one evening when no one else is there. Bring a single candle to light and sit in the silence, enjoying the peace of the season. (Be sure you've cleared this with somebody on the church staff.)
For Episcopalians: This should be super easy, and, what’s more, you don’t even have to ask permission. Go to any regularly scheduled weekday evening prayer service and you’re just about guaranteed to have the church to yourself!
Make hot cocoa for your grandma or grandpa. Ask them about Christmases past and their favorite traditions.
For Episcopalians: Make hot cocoa for your grandma or grandpa and let them tell you all their opinions about the “new” prayer book and the associate rector’s preaching.
“I’ve been making caramels every year for the last few years around Christmas time. It’s something I learned from my high school history teacher and it’s a great thing to bring to parties and gatherings during the holiday season.”
Make a mixed tape of familiar Christmas carols sung by famous musical artists and have a contest to see who can guess who's singing; award the tape to one who gets the most correct.
For Episcopalians: Do this, but with choral renditions of famous Anglican Christmas hymns, and then have people guess who arranged them (Hint: it’s John Rutter).
Read the Christmas story (Matthew 1 and Luke 2:1-20) several times before Christmas; write down some new insights God gives you as you read.
For Episcopalians: Try reading the Bible for the very first time! It doesn’t even have to be the Christmas story. Although if you do choose the Christmas story, that’s in the beginning of the New Testament. It’s about 2/3 of the way through the Bible.
Offer free babysitting for a busy mom in your church while she goes shopping.
For Episcopalians: Have an event to attract young parents, don’t offer childcare, and then complain when no one comes.
Merry Christmas!
“Every year for Christmas, my uncle would buy my little sister some horrendous kitschy singing doll. A reindeer that sang “Grandma Got Run Over By a Reindeer,” a Christmas tree that sang “O Christmas Tree,” etc. This was supposedly payback for when my dad would go over to my uncle’s house and rile up my cousins with roughhousing right before bedtime. My sister has grown too old to play with the signing toys ad infinitum and annoy my parents, so that tradition has been coming to a close. But… My uncle’s oldest grandchild has just gotten old enough to appreciate music and I want payback for all the songs I, a mere innocent bystander, was forced to hear ad infinitum all those Christmases ago. This tradition may continue...”
“I encourage the endless multiplication of nativities in my house. When I moved into my first non-dorm apartment, my mother sent me a small box of my ornaments and one small nativity scene, which is precisely the right number of nativity scenes for a single twenty-three year old. Then the campus minister offered me a nativity set he was getting rid of, but that was just two. The following year a friend’s mother sent me a small one for Christmas, and of course a gift like that can’t be refused. Last December, my wife’s grandmother said she had two nativities for us. We are now up to eight little Holy Families in total and I must confess that I have my eye on several more. (Don’t tell Bailey.)”
