Segullah

Mormon women blogging about the peculiar and the treasured

Jesus is Here

I am sixteen years old.  It’s Christmas time–December 23rd, to be precise.   I am in the car with my boyfriend, Matt, driving to the Santa Rosa stake center. I’m getting baptized tonight. I can’t stop smiling. I feel enveloped in a bubble of peace as deep as that of the first Christmas night. I’m getting baptized tonight! When we [...]

Mr. Krueger and Me

A few Sundays ago I was feeling somewhat desperate in my attempts to entertain three small children in a reverent manner, when I remembered my collection of free Church DVDS and decided to watch Mr. Krueger’s Christmas. If you haven’t seen it before, the short film tells the story of Mr. Krueger, an elderly man [...]

The Gift of Receiving

We are thick in the season of giving. Retail merriment may jing-jing-jangle our nerves, but many of us bask in thinking about our giftees and what might bring them joy. This is progress from our less-enlightened “gimme” days. Wonderful! We are learning to be good gift givers. The flip side of this is that this [...]

Post-Christmas Reflections

The new clothes and gadgets have all been put away (at least they’ve been moved up to the children’s rooms), wrapping paper and boxes are crammed in the recycling bin, and the sugar cookies and coconut bread and chocolates and the leftovers from Christmas Day have been eaten. After a whirlwind month of decorating and [...]

The Perfect Present

One Christmas, when I was a gappy-toothed, precocious firecracker of a eight year old, I received every single present I asked for. I remember how just weeks from Christmas I told my aunts the list of things I wished for on a family walk, how the day’s summer-heated glare was finally smudging into cooler dusk, [...]

Am I a Donkey?

Q: What is the purpose of life? Typical LDS A: It’s our time to prepare to meet God, to prove ourselves worthy to live again with Heavenly Father. Who am I to quibble with the Abraham 3: 24-26? “And we will prove them herewith, to see if they will do all things whatsoever the Lord [...]

Christmas and Memory

We decorated our Christmas tree a few days ago, with hand-me-down ornaments and candy canes clustering densely toward the bottom of the tree (none of the candy canes hang higher than chest high). The decorations brought back so many memories that I seemed to be seeing a kind of Christmas palimpsest, a double-vision of the [...]

Looking up

See that woman in the middle? The one alone With the white hat and broom Head down, sweeping Or digging, maybe. That has been me. Focused on the depth of snow in front of me And my need to dig out. Oblivious To the boisterous gathering over there And to the snow-stuck wagon behind me, [...]

Black Friday? Pshaw — Spend it at the Segullah Store Instead!

Do you really want to get up early this morning, stand in long lines in the cold, and potentially engage in fisticuffs over the last $100 LCD TV?  I didn’t think so.  Spend it instead in your jammies and bunny slippers, sitting in front of a roaring fire and your laptop, sipping creamy hot chocolate, [...]

Season’s Greetings – yikes!

Every year about this time I feel the pressure build. What am I going to do for The Family Christmas Letter? There are a lot of styles of family Christmas letters. One of them is Brag Rags. Of course we enjoy the highlights of our friends’ years. It’s the kind where the “typical accomplishments” involve [...]

‘Tis the season to give each other goodies (but I really wish we wouldn’t)

I know that some of you out there enjoy giving and receiving neighbor gifts at Christmas time. In fact, right now you’re putting the finishing touches on your homemade, hand-dipped chocolates or your caramel macadamia nut popcorn balls before deftly wrapping them in cellophane and gold French ribbon and delivering them to snow-covered homes all [...]

And the Soul Felt Its Worth

I sat in my car, my hands gripping the steering wheel, glaring at the front end loader inching its way across the road. Perhaps the sheer force of my gaze could speed the thing up? But no. It lurched forward, then back, then forward, then back, performing what appeared to be a 39-point turn to [...]

Great Expectations

“I’ve got the greatest gift for you!” my husband tells our daughter. I shoot a glare at him, and if looks could kill, I’d be spending the holidays in the slammer. Usually we both subscribe to the Marjorie Hinckley school of thought, where low expectations are the key to happiness. At Christmas time, however, we [...]

The Customary Christmas

My first Christmas with my husband was a tempestuous one. Instead of exchanging romantic gifts in front of a roaring fire as I’d always dreamed, we spent most of the holidays arguing and nursing hurt feelings. Christmas quickly disintegrated into a “my family” vs. “your family” throwdown (my family’s way of doing things being the [...]

The Spirit of 6 Year Old Giving

I was six. My mother wrote on the  fold-over envelope all the names of the members our family, tucked the $5 bill inside the envelope, and closed the pouch. I hurriedly zipped it into my purple backpack alongside my pink My Little Pony lunch box. My blond pig tails bounced as I skipped out for the bus. This was to be my first [...]

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