Sacred Holidays
Sacred Holidays

Author: Becky Kiser

Publisher: B&H Publishing Group

Published: 2018-10-16

Total Pages: 140

ISBN-13: 1535914130

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Do you enter every holiday wanting it to be meaningful, only to find that it feels chaotic with no direction? We set New Year’s goals we can’t keep, struggle to love or be loved on Valentine’s Day, and find it hard to celebrate the risen Jesus when we are searching for the perfect Easter dress. Our summer and back-to-school seasons are whirlwinds, even as adults; we aren’t quite sure what to do with Halloween as Christians; and we feel less than grateful at Thanksgiving because it is sometimes full of complicated people. Even Christmas becomes a challenge, as celebrating Jesus gets lost behind twinkling lights and a mountain of gifts. Holidays are meant to be more than chaos with glimpses of grace; they are meant to draw us closer to God and one another. We want all the whimsy and joy the holidays held when we were children, before life crowded it out. We want the holidays to reflect our love for Jesus and reveal the grace that has been lavished on us, but life is so busy that setting a game plan just doesn’t happen. No more. It’s time to stop trying to survive the holidays or over indulge the whimsy, and instead live in the abundant life God called us to live. Sacred Holidays is part book and part resource: meant to help you avoid what has tripped you up in the past and give you insights, tips, and tools to make your holidays less chaotic and more about loving Jesus and others. Don’t let your holidays be marked by regret, whirlwinds, or survival mindset. Let’s celebrate every holiday together purposefully and worshipfully–loving Jesus and others well in every moment.

Sacred Holidays
Sacred Holidays

Author: Becky Kiser

Publisher: B&H Books

Published: 2018

Total Pages: 0

ISBN-13: 9781535914123

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Sacred Holidays is a guide to how to celebrate every holiday (Christmas, Easter, Halloween, Birthdays, Valentine's Day, etc.) intentionally and well as a Christian.

Holidays and Holy Nights
Holidays and Holy Nights

Author: Christopher Hill

Publisher: Quest Books

Published: 2003

Total Pages: 224

ISBN-13: 9780835608107

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This joyous, sparkling book opens the treasure chest of liturgical year to bring the creative power of the Divine into our ordinary lives here and now.

Holy Holidays!
Holy Holidays!

Author: Greg Tobin

Publisher: Macmillan

Published: 2011-03-01

Total Pages: 257

ISBN-13: 0230118046

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How did Sunday become the "Sabbath Day?" Why did St. Valentine become the patron saint of lovebirds? Most people happily participate in Mardi Gras, Halloween, and St. Patrick's Day with very little knowledge of the origins and meanings of those celebrations. Greg Tobin unearths the religious roots of the seemingly secular, offering historical trivia and the sometimes bizarre origins of the days throughout the year that bring people together. In these pages, readers will discover that: - Jesus was not born on Christmas Day. - The Easter Bunny is a deeply pagan tradition that simply could not be suppressed by the Church. Same with Easter eggs. - Mother's Day falls in early May, the month dedicated to Mary, the Mother of Christ and the Catholic symbol of motherhood. - Saint Patrick is not only the patron saint of Ireland but also Nigeria. and much more!

Occult Holidays, Or, God's Holy Days--which?
Occult Holidays, Or, God's Holy Days--which?

Author: Fred R. Coulter

Publisher:

Published: 2006

Total Pages: 351

ISBN-13: 9780967547978

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Confused and disillusioned, many today are wondering, "Is there a God? Where is He? What, if anything, is God doing?" Mankind sees scant evidence in religion of God's direct involvement in the course of humanity. Shackled by tradition and religious myths, even professing "Christianity" gropes in a vacuum of ignorance regarding God's true plan for mankind. Why? Because man has (for the most part, unknowingly) rejected the key to that plan-the knowledge of the seventh-day Sabbath and holy days of God. Instead, traditional holidays-including Sunday-have been adopted and accepted as "Christian." Declaring the "end from the beginning," the true God of the Bible is actively involved in the affairs of man, ordering events according to His master plan as outlined by His Sabbath and feast days. Obviously, Satan the devil hates God's plan-for it also pictures his ultimate removal as the "god of this present age." In what is perhaps one of the greatest conspiracies in the history of mankind, Satan has devised a cleverly disguised counterfeit "Christianity" to blind men from the knowledge of God's true plan. Analogous to King Jeroboam of ancient Israel-who substituted false "feast days" in place of God's true holy days-Satan has deceptively ensnared an unsuspecting world into believing that pagan occult holidays are acceptable forms of worship toward God. In Occult Holidays or God's Holy Days-Which?, Fred R. Coulter brings to light this satanic conspiracy, uncovering in detail the occult roots of today's so-called "Christian" holidays-Halloween, Christmas, Easter, etc.-proving that such holidays are, in reality, a form of Satan worship. Mr. Coulter demonstrates how God's seven annual holy days form a type of framework upon which are hung the various aspects of God's plan as they are fulfilled over time. This publication fully illustrates how God's seventh-day Sabbath and holy days picture His plan of salvation for all of mankind, concentrating on the establishment of the Kingdom of God and the eternal rule of Jesus Christ.

A Sacred Space Is Never Empty
A Sacred Space Is Never Empty

Author: Victoria Smolkin

Publisher: Princeton University Press

Published: 2019-10-29

Total Pages: 360

ISBN-13: 0691197237

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When the Bolsheviks set out to build a new world in the wake of the Russian Revolution, they expected religion to die off. Soviet power used a variety of tools--from education to propaganda to terror—to turn its vision of a Communist world without religion into reality. Yet even with its monopoly on ideology and power, the Soviet Communist Party never succeeded in overcoming religion and creating an atheist society. A Sacred Space Is Never Empty presents the first history of Soviet atheism from the 1917 revolution to the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991. Drawing on a wealth of archival material and in-depth interviews with those who were on the front lines of Communist ideological campaigns, Victoria Smolkin argues that to understand the Soviet experiment, we must make sense of Soviet atheism. Smolkin shows how atheism was reimagined as an alternative cosmology with its own set of positive beliefs, practices, and spiritual commitments. Through its engagements with religion, the Soviet leadership realized that removing religion from the "sacred spaces" of Soviet life was not enough. Then, in the final years of the Soviet experiment, Mikhail Gorbachev—in a stunning and unexpected reversal—abandoned atheism and reintroduced religion into Soviet public life. A Sacred Space Is Never Empty explores the meaning of atheism for religious life, for Communist ideology, and for Soviet politics.

Religious Celebrations [2 volumes]
Religious Celebrations [2 volumes]

Author: Bloomsbury Publishing

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA

Published: 2011-09-13

Total Pages: 1077

ISBN-13: 1598842064

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This two-volume work presents a comprehensive survey of all the ways people celebrate religious life around the globe. Religious Celebrations is an alphabetically organized encyclopedia that covers more than 800 celebratory occasions from all of the world's major religious communities as well as many of the minor faith traditions. The encyclopedia provides a complete reference tool for examining the myriad ways people worldwide celebrate their religious lives across religious boundaries, providing information on numerous celebratory activities never before covered in a reference work. Offering the most comprehensive coverage of religious holidays ever assembled, this two-volume book covers festivals, commemorations, holidays, and annual religious gatherings all over the world, with special attention paid to the celebrations in larger countries. Entries written by distinguished researchers and specialists on different religious communities capture the unique intensity of each event, be it fasting or feasting, frenzied activity or the universal cessation of work, a huge gathering of the faithful en masse or a small family-centered event. The work spotlights celebrations that currently exist without overlooking now-abandoned celebrations that still impact the modern world.

The Sacred Santa
The Sacred Santa

Author: Dell deChant

Publisher: Wipf and Stock Publishers

Published: 2008-04-24

Total Pages: 241

ISBN-13: 1556358393

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The Sacred Santa is an inquiry into the religious dimension of postmodern culture, seriously considering the widespread perception that contemporary culture witnesses a profound struggle between two antithetical systems -- a collision of two worlds, both religious, yet each with vivid visions of the sacred that differ radically with regard to what the sacred is and what it means to human life and social endeavor.

Tales from Sacred Wind
Tales from Sacred Wind

Author: Cratis D. Williams

Publisher: McFarland

Published: 2003-03-11

Total Pages: 460

ISBN-13: 9780786414901

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Prior to his death in 1985, Cratis Williams was a leading scholar of and spokesperson for Appalachian life and literature and a pioneer of the Appalachian studies movement. Williams was born in a log cabin on Caines Creek, Lawrence County, Kentucky, in 1911. To use his own terms, he was "a complete mountaineer." This book is an edited compilation of Williams' memoirs of his childhood. These autobiographical reminiscences often take the form of a folktale, with individual titles such as "Preacher Lang Gets Drunk" and "The Double Murder at Sledges." Schooled initially in traditional stories and ballads, he learned to read by the light of his grandfather's whiskey still and excelled at the local one-room school. After becoming the first person from Caines Creek to attend and graduate from the county high school in Louisa, he taught in one-room schools while pursuing his own education. He earned both a BA and MA from the University of Kentucky before moving to Appalachian State Teacher's College in 1942; later he earned a Ph.D. from New York University and then returned to Appalachian State.

Power and the Sacred in Revolutionary Russia
Power and the Sacred in Revolutionary Russia

Author: Glennys Young

Publisher: Penn State Press

Published: 2010-11

Total Pages: 330

ISBN-13: 0271042389

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After the 1917 Revolution in Russia, the Bosheviks launched a massive assault on religion. Although we know a great deal about how the Bolsheviks went about doing this&—propaganda, persecution of clergy and laity, seizing church property&—scholars have not devoted much attention to the other side of the story: the people who were being persecuted and how they responded to their persecutors. Glennys Young shows how ordinary Russian peasants devised ways of asserting their religious faith during the difficult period of New Economic Policy, 1921&–28, when the Party-state was ideologically obsessed with eradicating religion. Faced with persecution, torture, and the creation of antireligious organizations such as the League of the Godless, Orthodox clergy and laity organized themselves against the Bolsheviks. They revived factional politics, even using the village soviets, the intended cornerstone of Soviet power in the countryside, to defend their religious interests. When they achieved some degree of success in their resistance, the Bosheviks were forced to respond and adapt their strategies&—a conclusion that scholars have not put forward previously. Based on extensive research in archives and published sources, Young's book will force historians of Soviet Russia to confront religious issues as central to rural politics. Her work also draws upon cultural anthropology and theories of peasant politics, making it of great interest to any scholars studying the processes of secularization and desacralization in other cultures.