By: Jeff Perrine

Ahhh, the season of Christmas. It’s such a special time of year with beautiful lights accenting our neighborhoods, Christmas trees carefully decorated, warm scents of deliciously prepared food, the joyful sound of Christmas music, and the warm glow of family and friends coming together to celebrate.

Most importantly, Christmas marks the time of year we come together as a church family to celebrate and proclaim the birth of Jesus.

Perhaps like your family, our family developed many Christmas traditions. My favorite was the Perrine family’s “Ugliest Christmas tree ornament contest.” The children were the judges, and the adults all competed for their attention to lobby them for their vote. Each year the winner’s ornament was placed on the family Charlie Brown Christmas tree and was awarded bragging rights for a year. It was interesting to see how creative adults could be in purchasing or creating an ugly ornament!

Mount Carmel also has a tradition we celebrate each Christmas Eve: our candlelight service. We gather and sing impactful carols, listen to a message about the hope of the world, and light candles to celebrate the birth of Jesus. Children get into the action with a glowstick. It’s a fun and warm time for all.

This year we are back to our sanctuary for Christmas Eve services. Our services this year will be at 3:30, 5:00, and 6:30 pm. Both our sanctuary and lobby will be available to participate in the service, and all three services will be streamed on both YouTube and live.mtcarmelchurch.org.
We’ve provided invitation cards and the Mount Carmel Impact magazine that you can use to invite family and friends to the services. Christmas Eve is one of those occasions when unchurched people are more open to attending and hearing about the life-saving message of Jesus Christ. We hope you find these cards a helpful tool to invite others and Mount Carmel Impact to help others understand that we both teach and live out the word.

As Christmas Eve services can be more crowded than usual, you may wonder if wearing a mask is welcome. For the time being, masks are recommended at all Mount Carmel services.

Our staff is working hard to make this a meaningful service this year. We are praying that you find this season impactful in a meaningful way and that the hope and joy of Christmas are with you and your family.

God bless….