Christmas at RMC 2008

The post below is what I wrote last year for my other blog.  With Christmas Eve tomorrow, I thought it was fitting to relive my first Christmas at RMC!  Enjoy!

This was my first Christmas serving at Raleigh Moravian Church. So I thought a few images from Christmas Eve would be fun to include in our blog. We have a congregational Lovefeast the Sunday before Christmas that I presided over. Then we have 3 lovefeasts on Christmas Eve. 2:30 is for families and children and is geared to the children--they do a skit to tell the Christmas Story (Steve made his directing debut this year with the skit and it went very well), sing some kid friendly songs like "Jesus Loves Me" and "This Little Light of Mine." They even include stand up and wiggle breaks to help the kids maintain attention throughout the service. They still get buns and candles, and substitute cider for the coffee. We also added baby Jesus to the manger/putz/nativity/creche that we had been building each week. The other two lovefeasts are at 5pm and 7:30pm and are more traditional.

Here are some images from Christmas:The Latin reads: Our Lamb Has Conquered, Let Us Follow Him. This is one of the decorations on the narthex (Sanctuary entrance area) Christmas Tree.

Even the chandeliers get decked out for the holidays!

This is the Christmas tree in the narthex of the church. It is decorated with stars, candles, and Schierenschitte (German paper cutting).

The youth serve as dieners (servers) for the Children's lovefeast. The candle portion of the service is so beautiful!

During the singing of the last song, the congregation is invited to raise their candles in the air, which is the most beautiful part of the service in my opinion. It takes my breath away every time I see it!

This is the front of the sanctuary with the star, candles and Southern magnolia greenery.

This is our advent wreath signaling the 4th Sunday of Advent--Christmas is here!!



The dieners love giving the pastors a treat on Christmas Eve for the lovefeast. It's tradition. Here is my Lovefeast bun from the 5pm service--sliced and filled with peanut butter, then decorated with marshmallow eyes and smile. I commented afterwards that it was actually really good with peanut butter but the marshmallows made me long for hot chocolate...






So at the 7:30pm Lovefeast, the dieneres (cough--specifically Dee Ann--but I don't want to name names) thought that SPAM would be a good addition to the Lovefeast buns. So here is my eyes wide open, smiling at me SPAM bun. They took my suggestion of Hot Chocolate seriously, so I had Hot Chocolate instead of Coffee. I can't recommend the SPAM, but the Hot Chocolate was YUMMY! I can't wait to see what the next Lovefeast brings...