Episcopal Church Foundation Vestry Papers - for leading congregations

This month we offer five resources on celebrating Christmas. Please share this digest with new members of your vestry and extend an invitation to subscribe to ECF Vital Practices to receive Vestry Papers, blogs, and the monthly digest.

Are you more a Christmas Christian than an Easter Christian? In Christmas Christians, Peter Strimer explains a bit of Christmas history with his preference for Christmas over Easter.

Raul Diego Veizaga talks about the joyful Las Posadas processions that he experienced in Miami, FL in Las Posadas and the Journey to Bethlehem.

Richelle Thompson discusses the advantages of viewing Christmas Day as the beginning of Christmas (which it is) instead of the end in Bearing gifts, hosting parties.

In Honor worshipers as the pilgrims they are this Christmas Eve, Greg Syler talks about processions as pilgrimages and that visitors to your church are pilgrims during this holy time.

David Prentice in Finding the Christ Child at Christmas contrasts the modern celebrations of Christmas with those of different times, “Christmas calls out for that time in all of us to honor the newborn child – it calls for us to put down our maps and our checklists and our sales flyers and our expectations and to go outside, even just for a few moments, to follow a star.”