DECEMBER 1st

DECEMBER 1st:
• Thought/story:
The 24 stories/poems/thoughts are all quick to read and would be a good addition to a nightly devotion together with the scripture reference for the month of December-something you could do in probably less than a half an hour before bed.
The Worst Christmas Pageant Ever is a hilarious story---especially good for young adults.

• Scripture: Luke 8:41-56
Event: Raising the daughter of Jarius
Jesus Christ was compassionate

• Recipe: Cornflake Christmas Wreaths
Ingredients: 6 Cups cornflakes, 1 pkg. (40 reg. Size) marshmallows, red hots, ½ C margarine or butter, 1 tsp green food coloring, and cooking spray.
Instructions: In large saucepan, melt margarine or butter over low heat. Add marshmallows and stir until completely melted. Remove from heat. Stir in food coloring. Add corn flakes. Stir until well coated. Using 1/4th C. dry measure coated with cooking spray, evenly portion warm cereal mixture. Using buttered fingers, quickly shape into individual wreaths. Dot with red hots.
Almost all of these recipes are for desserts or treats since these are made often during the Holidays. Most of them are pretty simple and some are good for cookie plates, ect.

• Tradition:
Since it’s the first day of December, take time now to hang an advent calendar. There will be more tips on fun ways to use it.
Now is also a good time to sit down as a family and decide what you really want to do together for Christmas this year. Does everyone really want to go to the Annual___________or are you just going because ”you go every year.” This way the whole family has agreed to participate in certain activities and cannot later complain too much. You can also make assignments so that one person (namely Mom) doesn’t get stuck with everything! Also decide what activities you will not have time for and will need to say no to, what things didn’t work about last year, ect.

• Small Gift Idea:
Cookie Mix In A Jar: Use a quart jar and your favorite chocolate chip recipe. Mix flour, soda, salt & white sugar and put in bottom of jar. Tap the jar to settle. Then add brown sugar. Pack this into the jar. Then top that with chocolate chips and nuts (optional). Put a note on the jar listing the items they need to add. Put a fabric top around the jar lid and tie a raffia bow around that.

THE WORST CHRISTMAS PAGEANT EVER
By Ann Edwards Cannon

I was fourteen and wanted to die.

Part of the problem was that I was fourteen and female. My brother John, the doctor, says that being fourteen and female is a disorder actually recognized by the American Psychiatric Association, and that his professor once spent a whole day talking about it in his Introduction to Psychiatry class. Physical symptoms of the fourteen-and-female syndrome include slumping in chairs, standing with arms folded across the chest and wearing the exact same cloths and other disturbed fourteen-year-old girls. Behavioral symptoms include crying, trying on lip gloss, crying, going to the mall, crying, talking to disturbed fourteen-year-old boys on the telephone-and crying.
It’s a terrible disease, and so far there’s no cure.
So being fourteen was definitely part of my problem. The other part was that I was supposed to be the featured Youth Participant in the ward Christmas program that Sunday. It wouldn’t have been so bad if I had just been allowed to get up and deliver the standard Youth Talk, which runs something along these lines; “Today I’m going to talk about (fill in the blank). Webster’s Dictionary defines (fill in the blank) as (fill in the blank). I hope that we can all (blank, blank, blank)”. And so forth.
Well, I wasn’t going to be allowed to give a Youth Talk. I had to participate with a bunch of adults in a special holiday program written directly by Dr. LaVerl S Wanship, professor of music.
Dr. Wanship was a roly-poly little man who could play the piano like nobody’s business. In fact, he could play so well that sometimes he would stop in the middle of bearing his testimony and say, “Why don’t I just play my testimony for you?” Then he would stride up to the front of the chapel on his little legs, position himself in front of the piano, pause-and play. Whenever Dr. Wanship did this, I and the rest of the fourteen-year-olds in the ward would cringe. It was so embarrassing.
Actually Dr. Wanship wasn’t the only adult in our ward who did embarrassing things. There was Sister Miller, who wore white go-go boots even though she was seventy years old, and Brother Meacham, who sprayed spit every time he talked, and Sister Fisher who loudly told everybody at a ward party that all it took to keep regular was a cup of bran and a glass of warm water every morning.
Even my own parents were embarrassing. Although they were aways late to sacrament meeting, they breezed through the door at the front of the chapel and headed straight for the family pew instead of sitting circumspectly in the cultural hall stealing Cheerios from babies with the rest of the stragglers. “You guys never come on time, “a friend once whispered to me. “And why does your mother wear those black sunglasses to church, anyway?”
It was true. My mother, after arriving late, proceeded to sit through church meetings looking like Jacqueline Onassis avoiding the press at the airport. It didn’t matter that she was the most terrific-looking mother in the whole ward, not to mention the universe – I still wanted to slip like so much loose change through the cracks of a sofa.
And now I was supposed to do something embarrassing, too.
Dr. Wanship called a practice the Saturday before the program so we could rehearse our parts. We met in the chapel and took turns reading our parts from the podium while Dr. Wanship sat on the front pew and flapped directions at us.
It’s your turn, Sister Edwards.”
I schlepped over to the microphone like any self-respecting fourteen-year-old girl, plopped open my mostly unused Bible, and began to mumble.
“I am the light----“
Dr. Wanship leaped like a toad. “NO! NO! NO! Listen to the words you’re saying.” He placed his hands over his heart. “Feel the words you are saying.”
I stared at Dr Wanship. Putting too much Dippity-Do in my bangs was something to get worked up about. Reading scriptures wasn’t.
“Try again.”
I did. He flew at me again. And again and again.
“He wants me to make a total fool of myself,” I wailed to my father that night.
My father looked like Job would have looked if the Lord had sent him a fourteen-year-old daughter along with the rest of the plagues. “Just do the best you can” he said patiently.
So the next afternoon I stood before the congregation, tossed my hair, and routinely read the words, “I am the light of the world: he that followeth me shall not walk in darkness, but shall have the light of life” (John 8:12)
When I sat down, I saw the look of profound disappointment cloud Dr. Wanship’s round little face.
Well, Dr. Wanship, that was more than twenty years ago, and it has taken me that long to understand why those words once made the night glad. So I want to apologize for letting you down and to tell you that I would try to read those words for you now the way you hoped I would then. I would make those glorious words ring from the chapel wall. I would make them crack stone.
Merry Christmas Dr. Wanship