This article has been updated to correct the day of the week of Dec. 10. It is a Sunday.
Three local churches will host Blue Christmas services during the next week, which aim to support those grieving or struggling with difficult emotions during the holiday season.
Grandview Church
Grandview Church, 888 Pleasure Road, Lancaster, will hold its annual Blue Christmas service at 7 p.m. Wednesday, Dec. 6, in the church sanctuary. The theme of the service is “Peace.”
The service is for anyone who has experienced grief or loss or anyone who feels blue at this time of the holiday season.
The service will also be livestreamed on the church’s website at grandviewlancaster.org/livestream.
Guest speaker for the service will be Molly Grace Hicks, a board-certified music therapist and bereavement coordinator with Penn Medicine Hospice. She serves grieving adults through counseling and support groups.
Hicks is clerk of the Worship & Ministry Committee at Old Haverford Friends Meeting in the Philadelphia suburbs; is a session leader for Alignment: Interfaith Contemplative Practices; leads music for monthly services at the Or Zarua Jewish spiritual community; and helps facilitate a monthly interfaith gathering called “Song, Silence and Sanctuary.”
First Presbyterian Church
First Presbyterian Church, 140 E. Orange St. in Lancaster, will hold its 19th annual Blue Christmas service at 2 p.m. Sunday, Dec. 10.
“Blue Christmas: A Service of Remembrance” recognizes that the Christmas season can be difficult for those who are grieving or enduring other difficult times. Organizers with the church describe the service as a way to remember “that there is a light shining in the darkness and the darkness cannot overcome it.”
Attendees will be able to leave a written prayer request and light a candle as a sign of their prayer. The church’s prayer and ministry teams will be available after the service for those who would like to make an individual prayer.
Those who would like the name of a loved one who has died in the last year read aloud in a prayer during the service can email the name to info@debordsnyder.com.
First Presbyterian pastors the Revs. Dan Snyder and Claire George-Drumheller along with DeBord Snyder Funeral Home directors Jeremy DeBord and Brian Maxwell, will lead the service. The church and funeral home have offered the service jointly since 2019.
Pianist Rila Hackett and cellist Beth Lavender will provide music during the service.
Free parking will be available off Grant Street behind the church, off Cherry Street alongside the church, on East Orange Street and behind Debord Snyder Funeral Home across the street.
Lancaster Church of the Brethren
Lancaster Church of the Brethren will host its own Blue Christmas service at 3 p.m. Sunday, Dec. 10, in its chapel, at 1601 Sunset Ave. in Lancaster.
The intimate, reflective service is intended for anyone who recently lost a loved one or otherwise deals with grief and sadness during the holiday season.
Organizers of the service hope the event is “a safe place encounter God in a healing and meaningful way,” as said in a news release.
For more information, contact Pastor of Child and Elder Ministries Jamie Nace at PastorJamieN@lancob.org or 717-397-4751, ext. 106.
