My stake recently made significant boundary changes for all the wards and called all new leadership. At the special service at the stake center all the old leaders who had been released sat in their seats at the front wearing lei’s hand made by one of the mothers of a newly called Bishop. I have frequently seen Polynesian traditions incorporated into church events in other areas as well and it is something I have not seen often in any church outside of Hawaii itself. I have also noticed that among Latter-Day Saints there has been a growing interest in the Dia De Los Muertos traditions during the Halloween season because of their beauty and the greater meaning it brings to the holiday with its emphasis on remembering and honoring our ancestors. The church’s openness to embracing the meaningful traditions of its members’ cultures is one of its under-appreciated strengths in my opinion. It fosters a sense of community that unifies while simultaneously honoring the diversity that is the garden of the Lord’s Church. 

Within western Christianity there are many very old traditions that have been forgotten with the rise of Evangelicalism or commercialized beyond recognition. In a time when there was no TV, radio, and when most people couldn’t even read, these traditions gave opportunities for communities to come together to celebrate and put special emphasis on important doctrines. This created unity in the community and passed on their beliefs and values to the next generation in an experiential way that created strong memories and associations. In her book, To Dance With God, Gertrud Mueller Nelson writes;

“The poetic aspect of the Church has been centered in the cycles of our human development and has nourished us through rite and symbol, through rhythmic repetition. This Church celebrates our cycles and seasons, inviting us to see and engage and feel and touch and be aware and grow and be transformed. Through myth and symbol the experiences which make up our daily lives are affirmed and made sacred. This creative and poetic Church helps us to pay full attention to what we might otherwise deem ordinary and commonplace. Rites and symbols use the ordinary and earthy elements of our existence and, by encircling them, ratify, sanctify, complete. The ordinary becomes the container for the divine.”

Remembering, and reviving, these traditions give those of us in the restored church today the opportunity to experience with our senses our own important doctrines and observe them in a way that unifies us with the experiences of our ancestors who may have lived in England, Germany, Spain, Holland, or other western countries. For myself, I can attest that rediscovering the traditions of my ancestors has brought a greater richness to my faith and creates a greater awareness of how sacred each day, week, and season is. Through these centuries and even millennia old traditions there is a vehicle to celebrate the gospel with each season in a way that excites even greater joy and anticipation for Christmas and Easter. 

Within the cycle of the year the autumn season has always been an important season across cultures for celebrating the harvest and acknowledging the cycle of life that inevitably must end in death. For our Jewish brothers the fall feasts center around the most holy days of the year when they look towards the final judgment and atonement of all things, remembering God’s work in creation, his Kingship over our lives, and remembering what he has already done by redeeming Israel from Egypt and giving them the scriptures [1]. For the Christian church this time of year was very influenced by what people were experiencing in their daily lives as they brought in the harvest and looked toward the colder months that had the potential to bring so much hardship with them. Remembering God’s faithfulness to provide our daily bread and looking with anticipation to the coming of the Christ child in the heart of the darkness of winter shaped what the church emphasized in this season. 

As a convert to the Restored Church I have found it to be easy to make connections between the spiritual practices I have come to love and the teachings of the Church. For me the old traditions create a sense of groundedness with their daily, weekly, and seasonal practices that remind me to center myself and reflect frequently on Christ. The revelations given to the Restored Church brings greater meaning to these practices with the breadth and depth of knowledge that is available to us.