Speaker & Worship Leader:- Keola Whittaker

Feeling a bit Grinchy this year? You’re not alone. This sermon is for everyone who has ever wanted to skip Christmas, escape the forced cheer, or hide from a holiday that asks too much. It’s also about what happens when love finds us anyway, in forms we didn’t expect, and in places we didn’t think to look.

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Keola Whittaker © 21 December 2025

The Grinch and Scrooge are my favorite Christmas characters. Not in spite of their cynicism, but because of it. They’re the only honest ones in their stories. Everyone else is performing joy, pretending Christmas magic just happens naturally. But the Grinch and Scrooge?

They’ve done the math. They’ve weighed Christmas against their pain and built excellent walls to protect themselves from a holiday that demands vulnerability they can’t afford.

And here’s what I love most: they’re not wrong. They’re not villains. They’re survivors. And they do what survivors do.

Until, of course, they’re visited.

Speaker and Worship Leader:- Rev. Clay Nelson

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Rev. Clay Nelson © 18th December 2022

I don’t consider it Christmas until I have watched It’s a Wonderful Life. I ticked that off last Sunday. So, for me, it’s now Christmas.

I don’t know when it became one of my treasured Christmas traditions, but I can’t remember when it wasn’t. When my kids were teenagers, there was lots of eye-rolling when I insisted that watching it was a family event. Something about it appealed to my Unitarian heart, and I wanted to inoculate theirs. They would ask me when I would find a new tradition. My answer was, “When I stop tearing up at the end.”

with Rev. Clay Nelson

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Clay Nelson © 19 December 2021

I need to begin this musing with a warning to those who might be triggered by words like Jesus or Christianity. On the Sunday before Christmas, I give myself permission to express some of my thoughts and ideas about progressive Christianity, which are the foundation of my faith. My justification is that both of the denominations that make up Unitarian Universalism were progressive Christians before we had a term for it. While Unitarian Universalism no longer identifies only with Christianity, many of our members are progressive Christians or Christians without God as I like to call them. For those who are repelled by Christianity either because they have experienced toxic Christianity or count themselves amongst rationalists and humanists or follow another faith tradition they bring to the mix, I hope learning about the scholarship that has revealed a very different Christianity from what we normally see around us will be both enlightening and beneficial.

with Rev. Clay Nelson

No video or audio this week.

But you can still read below, or download the PDF.

Follow this shortcut to the bottom of the page for the various readings, videos, etc. shared in the service.

Clay Nelson © 20 December 2020

On this last Sunday that I will be sharing my musings in 2020, I thought I would make it as Covid-free as possible. I decided to muse on why Unitarians still celebrate Christmas against all reason.