White Friday

"No male baptisms today?" asked the kindly brother in charge of the font at the temple. I explained that my wife and I had come to handle only female baptisms and that I wanted to bring my school age sons to act as proxies for the male names that they had researched and cleared themselves (with help from Mom). This would necessitate coming when our boys were not in school.

"Ah," replied the brother. "Then bring your sons here the Friday after Thanksgiving. While the rest of the world is out there having Black Friday, we will be in here having White Friday." This, of course, was a reference to the clean white clothing worn when participating in temple ordinances.

So that is what we did. The same brother was handling the baptistery when my sons and I arrived. He recognized me and was pleased that we had accepted his invitation.

While nearby shopping venues were raucously thronged by bargain hunters seeking to prepare a Christmas cornucopia to be plunged into by revelers "quivering with desire and the ecstasy of unbridled avarice" (A Christmas Story), my boys experienced the quiet pleasure found in giving of themselves to serve others in the serenity of the temple.

How proud I am of my boys. How much more this experience will do for them and for their deceased kin than would the pursuit of any "craptastic item that we genuinely do not need" (Michael Lyons). How grateful I am for the temple workers that spent their day serving so that others might be blessed.