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  • December sixth, The Modern Look and Lore of Santa Claus (1863). Universalist Thomas Nast produced over seventy illustrations of Santa. It is from Nast that the world first learned of Santa's red suit, that he gives coal if you're naughty, and even that Santa, as a world citizen, belonging to no...
    Image | By Ralph Yeager Roberts | November 23, 2015 | From WorshipWeb
    Tagged as: Advent, America, Christmas Eve / Christmas, Playfulness, Secular, Winter, Winter Solstice / Yule
    Worship element
  • December fifth, "Jingle Bells" (1857). First performed at a Thanksgiving event by the Sunday school children from the Unitarian Church in Savannah, GA who were led by the church music director and the song’s composer James Pierpont. “Jingle bells” was published in 1857, but only gained...
    Image | By Ralph Yeager Roberts | November 23, 2015 | From WorshipWeb
    Tagged as: Advent, America, Arts & Music, Christmas Eve / Christmas, Winter, Winter Solstice / Yule
    Worship element
  • December fourth, the earmuff is invented (1873). Lifelong Unitarian Chester Greenwood received the Patent for the first earmuff when he was 15. His factory manufactured the new winter wear for over 60 years. However, Chester himself worked as a mechanic in a bike shop he opened using profits from...
    Image | By Ralph Yeager Roberts | November 23, 2015 | From WorshipWeb
    Tagged as: Advent, Christmas Eve / Christmas, Winter Solstice / Yule
    Worship element
  • December third, Currier and Ives (1834). Founded by Unitarian Nathaniel Currier, the Currier and Ives Printing Firm published an annual set of winter images....
    Image | By Ralph Yeager Roberts | November 23, 2015 | From WorshipWeb
    Tagged as: Advent, America, Arts & Music, Christmas Eve / Christmas, Winter
    Worship element
  • December first, "Over The River And Through The Woods" (1844). The song "Over the River and Through The Woods" is based on a poem by Unitarian author and human rights champion Lydia Maria Child. Inspiration for the poem came from her own childhood memories of Thanksgiving at her grandparents’...
    Image | By Ralph Yeager Roberts | November 11, 2015 | From WorshipWeb
    Tagged as: Advent, Christianity, Christmas Eve / Christmas, IllUUmination, Unitarianism, Winter, Winter Solstice / Yule
    Worship element
  • Like those shepherds who were on the hillsides with their flocks, like those wise ones in their observatories with their telescopes and astronomical charts, we find our daily work interrupted by these holidays. Like them, we can’t keep on working, we have to listen to singing angels, we have to...
    Meditation | By Mary Wellemeyer | May 13, 2015 | From WorshipWeb
    Tagged as: Advent, Awe, Beginnings, Calling, Christmas Eve / Christmas, Journey, Searching, Vision, Work
    Worship element
  • Holy Unnamable One, Wholly Unknowable One, Again we have read the story. Again we have sung the tale. Again we wonder at our place in it. Is it ours to tell? How can it beours to live?...
    Prayer | By Lisa Doege | March 16, 2015 | From WorshipWeb
    Tagged as: Birth, Christianity, Christmas Eve / Christmas, Direct Experience, Hope, Listening, Mystery, Peace, Privilege
    Worship element
  • Christmas and Hanukah once upon a time were about struggle, hope, and freedom. Both stories are exile stories pointing out how even a glimmer of light can provide a lasting hope for the triumph of all that is good. While we haven’t altogether lost these themes in our modern interpretations, we...
    Reading | By Daniel Chesney Kanter | February 17, 2015 | From WorshipWeb
    Tagged as: Christmas Eve / Christmas, Hanukkah, Interdependence, Meaning, Wealth
    Worship element
  • Oh Beloved, Can it be that another year has passed? Wasn’t it just yesterday when we heard such familiar music, when these well-worn stories awakened us from our post-harvest slumber? Wasn’t it only weeks ago when we last reminisced about seasons past, when life seemed easier, when this season...
    Prayer | By Aaron Payson | January 25, 2015 | From WorshipWeb
    Tagged as: Christmas Eve / Christmas, Community, Hope, Joy, Prophetic Words & Deeds, Unitarian Universalism, Winter Solstice / Yule
    Worship element
  • Leader 1: This is a special night – Christmas Eve, the night before we celebrate the birth of a Jewish leader whose life and words have changed the minds and hearts of many to the side of goodness, generosity and caring. Leader 2: In honor of that birth, tonight we tell the story of a man whose...
    Script | By Tess Baumberger, Cindy Clarenbach | January 25, 2015 | From WorshipWeb
    Tagged as: 1st Principle (Worth & Dignity), 3rd Principle (Acceptance & Spiritual Growth), 6th Principle (World Community), Christianity, Christmas Eve / Christmas, Compassion, Conscience, Dignity, Generosity, Prophetic Words & Deeds, Transformation, Unitarian Universalism, Unitarianism
    Worship element
  • A Christmas Play for Grownups Minister: Tonight I invite you to imagine yourselves there that holy night, when a mother and father had their first child. We try to imagine what went through the minds and hearts of the parents of Jesus, in the months leading up to his birth....
    Script | By Tess Baumberger | January 25, 2015 | From WorshipWeb
    Tagged as: Children, Christianity, Christmas Eve / Christmas, Contemplation, God, Love, Parents, Unitarian Universalism
    Worship element
  • Something has changed in me this winter. In the past I’ve focused on how long winter is, How miserable I find it, and how it seems so interminable. This winter, I find myself thinking instead That every day, every hour, every minute Brings us just that much closer to spring. We all experience...
    Poetry | By Tess Baumberger | January 25, 2015 | From WorshipWeb
    Tagged as: 3rd Principle (Acceptance & Spiritual Growth), 4th Principle (Truth & Meaning), 7th Principle (Interconnected Web), Acceptance, Advent, Agnosticism, Atheism, Brokenness, Christmas Eve / Christmas, Despair, Earth-Centered, Humanism, New Year, Strength, Unitarian Universalism, Wholeness, Winter Solstice / Yule
    Worship element
  • You never know how things will turn out. Sometimes big events have very small beginnings. A little acorn can turn into a giant oak tree, for example, but you’d never guess from looking that the acorn had all that potential hidden inside. Long ago, Jesus talked with people about that very idea....
    Homily | By Gary Kowalski | January 25, 2015 | From WorshipWeb
    Tagged as: 6th Principle (World Community), Children, Christianity, Christmas Eve / Christmas, Courage, Justice, Prophetic Words & Deeds, Transformation
    Worship element
  • Asked if he was lonesome in his hut on Walden Pond, our neighbor Henry Thoreau famously replied, “How could I be lonely? Don’t I live in the Milky Way?” Thoreau doubtless would have been encouraged by the recent discovery of Kepler-22, a planet just 600 light years from earth right in the...
    Reading | By Gary Kowalski | January 25, 2015 | From WorshipWeb
    Tagged as: 7th Principle (Interconnected Web), Advent, Awe, Christmas Eve / Christmas, Direct Experience, Science, Wonder
    Worship element
  • When I was a child, the day after Thanksgiving was steeped in ritual. Every year my family would travel to Chicago for the holiday festivities. Our tour was always the same: We'd tromp up and down Michigan Ave., admiring store windows with animated mechanical dolls that served as actors for the...
    Meditation | By Kaaren Solveig Anderson | January 21, 2015 | From WorshipWeb
    Tagged as: Christmas Eve / Christmas, Generosity, Humility, Service
    Worship element
  • Please join me in a spirit of prayer or meditation as you are moved. Blessed and holy night, silent night, full of truths too awesome to bend into words, we sit in the glow of ages, wound round stories that teach us some of what it means to be human, and some of what it means to see God. The...
    Meditation | By Anya Sammler-Michael | January 21, 2015 | From WorshipWeb
    Tagged as: Christmas Eve / Christmas
    Worship element
  • ‘Tis the Season . . . of advertisers run amok and ambitions amplified beyond belief . . . of Martha Stewart moments mixed with desert island dreams . . . when even the most dedicated holiday-hopper admits perfection isn’t possible and “good enough” is how the season ought to be. ‘Tis the...
    Meditation | By Maureen Killoran | January 21, 2015 | From WorshipWeb
    Tagged as: Advent, Christmas Eve / Christmas, Prayer Practices
    Worship element
  • It was December. I was in a new school in a new place and there were new teachers and new classmates. And we were living in a new house too. Also there was no snow in Florida. That was a lot of new things at once. I didn’t like it. At least I had my bicycle—it was my old bicycle so it wasn’t...
    Story | By Orlanda R Brugnola | January 21, 2015 | From WorshipWeb
    Tagged as: Children, Christmas Eve / Christmas, Direct Experience, Generosity, Home, Joy, Parents
    Worship element
  • Once more the year's turned round. We've come full circle on this small planet, Spinning down the grooves of change, Another revolution completed around the sun. Another year older ... Another set of rings on the tree ... As seasons parade in endless procession The people's troubles and prayers...
    Meditation | By Gary Kowalski | January 21, 2015 | From WorshipWeb
    Tagged as: Christianity, Christmas Eve / Christmas, Hope, Immanence, Revelation, Transformation, Unitarian Universalism, Wonder
    Worship element
  • We are five days away from what is has come to be traditionally celebrated as the birth of Jesus of Nazareth....
    Sermon | By David A Miller | January 21, 2015 | From WorshipWeb
    Tagged as: 6th Principle (World Community), Advent, Christianity, Christmas Eve / Christmas, Generosity, Grace, New Child, Revelation, Transformation, Unitarian Universalism
    Worship element