While the morg's chapels and Temple remain closed. If they want to mainstream they at least could do Christmas eve and Christmas day services!! Stupid cult!!
Some will, some seriously Protestant won't. The Plymouth Pilgrims spent Dec. 25, 1620, building their houses. No papist celebrations for those Calvinists.
They did rebroadcast temple square Christmas on tv tonight on PBS. I think the signal made it past Zions curtain across the Rocky Mountains over the Mississippi to the Eastern cities where the all the Baptists live.
In my neighborhood yesterday, the large and beautiful Weslyan church had hundreds of cars and the whole entry/parking area lined with those paper bag candle thingies. Directly next door is the LDS McChapel--homely and flat--without a single car in its car park. I wonder if that confuses people.
That's true, outside the Morridor, the message many people get if they drive past a closed Mormon building is that they don't celebrate Christmas at all. Meanwhile, every other church's parking lot is packed to capacity and one Catholic church near me has an agreement with the elementary school to use their playground as a parking lot during this season. I know because I've occasionally gone to their midnight mass and I'm not even Catholic.
Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 12/25/2014 02:04PM by adoylelb.
In Georgia (temporarily). Church isn't well respected here, but there are so many military that the ward is huge. People get the wrong idea about that. When I talk to my co-workers here about religion and Mormonism, their understanding is that Mormons should not be claiming to be Christian. Few Mormon doctrines or teachings overlap with mainstream Christianity. Some of the doctrines are completely polar opposites, such as the church's teaching of conditional love and universal salvation of believers.
Two services last night at our large episcopal parish, both of which were packed - especially the one ending at midnight. Carol singing, live trees, candlelight, poinsettias, wreaths, flowers, a small orchestra to accompany the choir along with the pipe organ. They do it up to the nines every year.
By comparison, growing up in TSCC I well remember a complete absence of special Christmas and Christmas Eve church services. Unless Christmas fell on a Sunday which still never seemed to warrant anything out of the ordinary, the Smithmas party in the gym with Santa Claus as the highlight of the evening and a sparsely decorated tree inside the entrance were about it.
Since a few years it has become common to have Christmaseve sevice around 3pm. Since they recognized that people love to attend service before exchanging the gifts or Santa to come they do it and sadly the chapel is full. I heatd of the mishies today there were around 2/3 nonmembers and the chapel was nearly full to the last seat. (Glooooohohohohooria in exelsis Deo) - the mishs promoted it very hard this year with caroling and handoutcookies (of course with a hint to # he is the gift amd the service on Christmas Eve) two things that are not common in our country And i rhink a big plus in this situation for the morgs is thatthey dont do a childrenfocused service where the kids play the Christmasstory as protestant and catholic church do. It seeems more interesting for younger and childless people who feel the need to attend a christmas service.