by Roseanna White | Jul 4, 2018 | Holidays
Wishing you a safe and fun Fourth, full of picnics and fireworks and reflections on the bravery that the Patriots embodied to make the United States a reality and not just a dream.
My family will enjoy a picnic and then watch the fireworks from my sister’s porch. Though I think our favorite celebration was the year we hilariously went to Niagara Falls for the Fourth. Because nothing says American Independence like going to Canada! LOL
Do you have any special plans for the holiday?
by Roseanna White | Mar 29, 2018 | Holidays, Sales
As my family busily celebrates Holy Week and Resurrection Day, I’m going to be taking a couple days off blogging. That will only affect today and Monday, and you’ll see me back here on Wednesday with a Remember When.
I hope you all enjoy your Resurrection Day activities with your families and churches! I’d love to hear about how you celebrate, if you haven’t shared yet on one of my other posts this week.
A Stray Drop of Blood will be on sale in my shop starting tomorrow. This book takes place around the death and resurrection of Jesus. You can snag your SIGNED copy HERE.
Don’t forget to submit your entries for the Hair Contest by Saturday night! You can find more information HERE.
PLOT TWIST!!!
I am also super excited to let you know that there has been an addition to the prizes for the hair contest!!!! A $20 credit to Lilla Rose! A HUGE “Thank You!” to Myra for the donation! You can see a few of their products pictured below…Pretty appropriate for the contest I think! You can follow Myra’s Newsletter HERE. And join her group on Facebook HERE.
And don’t forget about the rest of the amazing prizes!!!
by Roseanna White | Mar 28, 2018 | Ancient World, Holidays, Remember When Wednesdays
Tomorrow is the day many churches celebrate as Maundy Thursday–the Passover Thursday, the day Jesus shared the Last Supper with His disciples. Does your church celebrate this day with a meal?
Growing up in a United Methodist Church, we would have a Maundy Thursday dinner. It went something like this: ladies who signed up to help would bring a pot of beef stew. They were all mixed together into one giant pot, which made a rather tasty concoction. Plates of fruit and cheese were set out. Someone made unleavened bread. The pastor read through the Last Supper portion of one of the Gospels. There was optional foot-washing. The end.
After college, friends of ours had their pastor, who was a Messianic Jew, lead our Bible study through a Messianic Passover Seder. And it was quite simply, amazing. The actual seder meal, with the actual Jewish traditions included, shed
so much light on that portion of the Gospels! Suddenly everything Jesus said took on new, fuller meaning. His promises and claims are at specific points in the meal where He demonstrates that
He is fulfilling the Jewish law, the promises of the Prophets. If you’ve never participated in one of these, I can’t recommend it enough!
When Rowyn was a baby, we decided to do one at our church. I just found a free service guide online and printed it out, and we bumbled our way through. It was great, if not so great as the one led by someone who knew what he was doing. But we decided to do it again in 2012 and have made it an annual event.
Two years ago, my church decided to invest in actual Passover Haggadah booklets–these are little pamphlet style books for each person to have beside their plate. They have all the responsive readings and explain what each element of the Seder plate is for. Designed for English-speaking Christians, these little books have been a very welcome addition to our meal and are much easier to follow than the print-outs I’d found before. (We found them here.)
For our church, this meal has become a critical part of Holy Week. It’s when we focus on the history and how our Lord played into it. It’s when we remember the roots that He came from. It’s when we partake of a meal like He did with His followers.
Funny story. Two years ago, my mom was sick and couldn’t come to the meal. But my husband rigged some cameras in our fellowship hall and broadcast the event, and she watched from home. Now, there’s a portion of the meal where one of the kids is to get up and open the door, symbolically welcoming Elijah. When we got to this part, my mom’s door blew open. She thought it was pretty cool and texted us and commented on the website to tell us. But when she really got goosebumps was later in the service, when someone closes the door–and her door blew shut again all on its own. Just one of those little things that made her fully aware that she was part of us, even if too sick that day to join us physically.
This year, I’ll be again in charge of the Seder plate. I’ll be roasting eggs, making the apple clay (a mixture of raw apples, almonds, grape juice, and cinnamon I toss into the blender), baking unleavened bread, getting out the lamb bones I have in the freezer to roast, arranging bitter greens, spooning out horseradish, and mixing up salt water. All to make real to our church, as it’s made real to the Jewish people every year during Passover, how God delivered His people from slavery in Egypt all those years ago…and how Christ delivered us from slavery to sin on the cross.
by Roseanna White | Mar 26, 2018 | Holidays, Word of the Week
I’ve done this Word of the Week before, but it was six years ago, so I figured a revisit wouldn’t be begrudged by anyone. 😉
When Anglo-Saxon Christians first started celebrating the Mass of
Christ’s Resurrection, they gave it the name Easter, after Eastre, the
goddess of fertility and spring, whose holiday was likely the vernal
equinox. Have you ever looked up Eastre? She was a magician-goddess, and one of her tricks was to turn a chicken into a rabbit…but it still laid eggs. This, friends, is where we get the Easter Bunny bringing eggs for our baskets. Not exactly something that has to do with why we’re celebrating the day as Christians…
Now, all neighboring languages use a word derived from Latin pasche, or passover, for the holiday. (Which makes a whole lot more sense. I really wish English did this too!)
Easter eggs are attested from 1824 (though let it be noted that eggs are part of the Passover feast too, so there’s legitimate reason to include them in Resurrection celebrations). The Easter Bunny is from 1909. And as a
matter of fact, Easter Island is so named because the discoverer did so
on Easter Monday.
Although Christianity has a long history of “taking over” pagan
holidays and traditions and using them to get new converts to observe
Christianity instead, I have to say I don’t like the English word. I’d
never paused to consider it until my piano teacher back in the day
refused to use the word “Easter” and instead called it “Resurrection
Day.” (Of which I fully approve!) She would even re-title songs for our
recitals when necessary. One year I was playing “Easter Song” on the
organ, and it became “Resurrection Song.”
This is something I try to do in my speech, though I do frequently slip and old habits take over. But I’ve at least trained my kids to correct me. 😉 So around here, we’ll be celebrating Resurrection Day this Sunday–with a sunrise service, a breakfast at church, and then visiting a local nursing home before the family gathers for a scavenger hunt and dinner.
How do you celebrate the resurrection of our Lord?
by Roseanna White | Dec 22, 2017 | Holidays
I’m wishing everyone a wonderful Christmas! I’ll be taking a break from blogging, but I’ll be back on January 2 … with some fun. That will be release day for A Song Unheard, so in usual Writing Roseanna fashion, I’ll be celebrating with a big giveaway! Be sure to check in then to get in on the fun.
In the meantime, I hope you enjoy the time with friends and/or family. Here’s wishing you a holiday season filled with Joy, and much time for reading. 😉
by Roseanna White | Dec 11, 2017 | Holidays, Word of the Week
Last weekend, my church went to a nursing home (where we visit once a month) and sang carols with the residents. At which point, I realized that I’d never paused to look up the origin of the word!
Carol dates from around 1300, meaning, “a joyful song.” It came into being as a noun and a verb at around the same time, the verb meaning “to dance in a ring.” Etymologists aren’t entirely sure where the word comes from–the English is undoubtedly from the Old French carole, but before that, their best guess is that it’s from the Medieval Latin charaula (a dance to the flute), which is in turn from the Greek khoraules (flute player).
By the end of the 1300s, it was being used to mean “to sing with Joy or festivity” and was used particularly of joyful Christmas hymns by about 1500 onward.
It took a while, however, for the word to take on the meaning of “go around from place to place and sing Christmas carols.” That first appeared in 1879, though it was said at the time to be a revival of an old English custom.
Do you like to go caroling? Is it a traditional in your family or church?
Roseanna M. White is a bestselling, Christy Award winning author who has long claimed that words are the air she breathes. When not writing fiction, she’s homeschooling her two kids, editing, designing book covers, and pretending her house will clean itself. Roseanna is the author of a slew of historical novels that span several continents and thousands of years. Spies and war and mayhem always seem to find their way into her books…to offset her real life, which is blessedly ordinary. 