Holidays and Traditions
The holiday celebrations in Unitarian Universalist congregations reflect the Six Sources of our faith.
At KVUUC, we celebrate Christian holidays like Christmas and Easter, Jewish holidays like Passover, those of other traditions like Pagan Winter Solstice, and purely UU holidays like Chalica. Our holiday services use the stories and traditions creatively, calling us to our deeper humanity and our commitment to the good.
Unitarian Universalism has also developed unique rituals and traditions of its own — like the Sharing of Waters, Flower Communion, Coming of Age, and Bridging.
For Sharing of Waters, members bring to the service a small amount of water from a place that is special to them. During the appointed time in the service, one by one people pour their water together into a large bowl. It is then blessed by the congregation.
The Flower Communion is usually an annual ritual done in the spring that celebrates beauty, human uniqueness, diversity, and community. In this ceremony, everyone in the congregation brings a flower. Prior to the service, each congregant places their flowers on the altar in a shared vase. The congregation and minister bless the flowers, and they are redistributed. Each person takes home a different flower than the one they brought.
We honor our younger teenagers with a Coming of Age ceremony. They attend a year-long curriculum helping them to learn more about Unitarian Universalism and articulate their own beliefs. Then we conduct a ceremony which usually features the youth reading their statements of personal belief (credo statements) to the congregation. They may join the church at this time.
In May or June, we hold a Bridging ceremony to celebrate and congratulate members of the congregation who are graduating from high school. We mark their transition to being young adults. This ritual focuses on maintaining the graduates’ connections to Unitarian Universalism as they become adults.