Dialogue's 2012 Christmas Advent Countdown
December 9, 2012Happy Holidays from Dialogue Journal!
As a special advent-themed treat, Dialoguejournal.com will be featuring holiday-flavored offerings from it’s archives leading up to Christmas Day.
Today’s offering: “How to Worship Our Mother in Heaven (Without Getting Excommunicated)”“ an article by Kevin Barney that really does have a Christmas connection
Here’s a taste:
“I suggest that we reconceptualize how we think of our Christmas trees. Just as Peterson demonstrated that the tree of Nephi’s vision represented the mother of the Son of God, the babe being the fruit of the tree, so it seems a very natural extension of that idea to see the decorated trees erected in our homes each December as representing the Christ child’s mother—hence, indirectly the Mother of us all. Since the practice of putting up Christmas trees originated from a pagan fertility symbol that had to be reconceptualized in the first place to give it a Christian meaning, giving the tree our own reconceptualization would not be treading on inviolable ground. And, of course, putting a Christmas tree up each December is entirely unobjectionable in our culture, a practice at which no one would bat an eye. But seeing the tree as a symbol of our Mother may be a source of satisfaction to those who long to acknowledge Her in some way.”
Click to see all the 2012 Christmas countdown features.