Ringing in the new year, Mormon style

The church’s current policies are weird about New Year’s Eve and New Year’s Day.

First of all, fast Sundays are never to be held on New Year’s Day—the stake president is supposed to reschedule fast days for a different day when New Year’s Day falls on a Sunday (as it does this weekend). I mean, even Easter doesn’t get that treatment when it falls on the first Sunday of a month—so what’s so special about the first day of the year? I mean, one would think that church policy wouldn’t be assuming we need good hydration due to fighting off hangovers, you know?

Also, when new Year’s Eve falls on a Monday, New Year’s Eve parties can be held in church buildings. This is, as far as i can tell, the only exception to the rule that church activities are never to be held on a Monday night. I mean, we don’t even get to have a church activity on Monday night when Christmas Eve falls on a Monday, and you’d think you’d want to have some church-based observance of that day before you’d have one for New Year’s Eve, you know?

So what’s the big (religious) deal about New Year’s Eve and New Year’s Day? I mean, really, i don’t get it.

No seat for you!

One more thought from the branch where i attended church last Sunday—we met in what appeared to be a recently-built building (for example, it had the current church logo on it, rather than any of the ones you see on older buildings), and it was clearly built for a small branch (not that many classrooms, a smallish chapel, and so on). There was one rather odd bit about the building’s design, though: There was no place for chapel overflow seating—the influx of visitors that Sunday meant that those who came in just a few minutes early (that’s right, not those who came late, but rather those who were only a couple minutes early) had nowhere to sit for sacrament meeting, but had to stand in the very small foyer.

Not exactly a welcoming design, really.

Padding

What’s with padded folding chairs where the relief society meets, but hard chairs everywhere else (at least in most meetinghouses i’ve been to)? Are women’s coccyges really that much more delicate than those of males?

It…It was the trousers, really.

We get weird about clothing in our church. Consider, for example, the one i’ve run across more than once that holds that women must wear skirts to go into the chapel. Why?

Weirdest instance of this i’ve ever run across: Some years ago, Tuesday or Wednesday or whatever youth activity night, and a handful of women huddled outside the entrance to the chapel, trying to figure out how to get the child of one of them who was running around in the chapel. The problem? All of the women were wearing trousers. I walked by with a (male) friend, and they asked us to go fetch the child, which was then done.

The weirdness? We were wearing jeans. At least some of the women were wearing dress slacks. So what was up with it being okay for us to go in the chapel but not them?

p.s. Ten bonus points for whoever gets the obscure film reference in the title of today’s post.

Meetinghouses

Why do we build meetinghouses?

Serous question. I mean, the early Xian church was a home church bunch, and we’re rather emphatically not. So why have we chosen that particular way to be different?

Might even save a few dollars in heating/air conditioning and maintenance costs.