... I was listening to Christmas music this afternoon.
In fairness to me - I have a (somewhat legitimate) reason.
This semester I'm taking three month-long worship practicums. The month of September was Writing Liturgical Texts (I published some of my works in progress here and here) and this month we are on to Christian Year Celebrations: Ash Wednesday to Pentecost. Not surprising, a majority of the class is worship-based. On Friday we broke up into groups that will be responsible for putting on a part of a worship service that would take place during season, as well as creating a booklet of resources for these services that we'll give to our class members to use in their ministries.
Wondering what Christmas music has to do with worship services that happen between Ash Wednesday and Pentecost?
Well, nothing really. But my group agreed to put on the first service of our class, Palm Sunday, this coming Friday and I thought maybe listening to some "seasonal music" would get me into the spirit of the Christian Holidays. Since I don't have any Palm Sunday music on my iPod - or Easter music for that matter - Christmas music was the best that I could do.
And I have to say ...
... it put me in a GREAT mood!!
But, anyway. My point of this post is to ask you all if you have an Palm Sunday traditions in your churches that you would be willing to share with me. In my church growing up we would always tell the kids the story, explain to them that the palms weren't weapons and then have them pass them out to the adults. It got the point across, but I just think that there is SO much more that could be done - Jesus was entering TRIUMPHANTLY into Jerusalem after all - and I would love to be able to implement some of that stuff on Friday!!
So let me know - what is your favorite part of Palm Sunday?!
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Well, you know as much as I do about our church, but I just wanted to say that I was listening to Christmas music too, while putting up the fall decorations! :-)
ReplyDeletePassing out palms is big, as is making little crosses for the palms in Sunday School.
ReplyDeleteSome (rich) places will also spread palms in the aisle, and that actually looks very cool (although it's slippery).
I think that a lot of the "traditions" of Palm Sunday that Protestants really care about have to do with music. "All Glory, Laud and Honor" is REAAAAALLY important to a lot of congregations...people really look forward to it.
Tell us what else you find out!
Oh, and apparently Vince LaFontan's brother used to ride a donkey into church...
ReplyDeleteI LOVE Christmas Music!!! I'm going to point this entry out to Neal so that he lets me start playing it ASAP :)
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