We love Christmas here at the Exponent, which means we love Christmas posts!

Because of this love, we are dedicating this week to a Christmas Series, complete with poetry, ward Christmas party hints, an excellent Christmas Nativity play, and even a Christmas book review, plus lots of love for the women who celebrated the First Christmas, Exponent Style. But it won’t end this week, we will sprinkle flakes of Christmas cheer throughout all of December, in celebration of Christmas.

“But wait!” You say, “This week is American Thanksgiving! We want Tofurky recognition!”

We know!  We do, too! We love American Thanksgiving …and Canadian Thanksgiving, and Australian Thanksgiving and any time a Thanksgiving Feast is offered.  (“Thanksgiving” was a term used in a celebratory feast when voyagers arrived at far off destinations, and was even a term used among Mormons at the completion of a new chapel’s construction.) So we are still having some delicious Thanksgiving posts as a part of the Christmas Series, to round out the season properly…. rather like a nutmeg-sprinkled happy sip of egg nog.

But before this series of fresh Christmas posts begin, we invite you to visit the ghosts of Christmas posts past. So, sit down, grab a cup of cocoa –or iced chocolate for those in the Southern Hemisphere– and put your feet up. Because we have some magical Posts of Christmas Past for you, such as:

Heather’s laugh-out-loud Least Likely Christmas Lyrics to Appear on Holiday Cards.

Then sticking with a musical theme, we also have four of my Christmas musical favs,

one by Alisa that I personally believe enacted change in Tabernacle Choir policy,

and these, the first by  April Young Bennett, A Sabbath Christmas complete with Bing Crosby,

then Linda’s soulful Dreaming of a Black Christmas,

and lastly, the one you must sing– MRaynes’s Feminist Twelve Days of Christmas. 

But we aren’t all about singing past posts. We also have women of the Christmas story, and feminist Christmas inspiration here:

Em’s Christmas with the women of the nativity

Emily U’s What kinds of toys did you buy for Christmas?

A powerful Feminist Christmas story guest post

and my own Metaphysical Christmas Orphans.

But we’re not all about posts of the last decade.  We have powerful Women’s Exponent classics from:

Emily Hill Woodmansee, titled A Christmas Carol for 1880 written in 1880,

and Maureen Ursenbach Beecher’s Easter Thoughts at Christmas from 1976.

….We especially cannot omit Christmas poetry, especially when it is from from Judy Curtis!

Lest we forget…

Deborah’s moving post about the assimilation of once-displaced children trying to find balance in Ghosts of Christmas Past, and Brook’s Moving Over Christmas—  which for me has special meaning this Christmas, as I face my own move just after the fat Santa-man sings at my house this year.

Speaking of that…. what’s Christmas without an appearance from Santa? Or should we omit Santa? April Young Bennett teases this out in her Perpetuating the Santa Claus Myth.

Last but not least, and lest you think we leave you without some nosh, we can round out this limited Posts of Christmas Past list with a delicious Red Lentil Soup for Christmas  from EmilyCC.

So… when you need a “pick me up” from shopping, cooking or dealing with commercialized Christmas overload, come here. Make yourself at home. Share the spirit. Think about something new. And celebrate Christmas, Exponent style.

Noel!