Visitors and guests often find New Skete to be a place of peace and quiet. Visits offer an opportunity to find balance in your life and open your heart to the wonders of God’s creation and love. This Christmas holiday, the monks, nuns, and staff would like you to holiday with us through this collection of photos.

          Thanksgiving snow was the ideal weather event to start the 2024 holiday season. The wet, heavy snow stuck to the trees and roof tops. We are grateful to the crew that keeps the road to the monks’ monastery and the driveway to the nuns’  monastery plowed.

          The time between Thanksgiving and Christmas is “crunch” time for the monks’ and nuns’ businesses. Final batches of cheesecake are baked and shipped, puppies are cared for and socialized in anticipation of going to their forever homes, and the final group of dogs in training are ready to wow their owners with their obedience skills. 

          The Christmas lights at New Skete are truly magical. The hours spent hanging the lights are many, but the result is well worth the effort. No monk, nun, or staff member can resist capturing this special time of year in photos. 

          Only one subject tops the desire to take photos of the Christmas lights: everyone’s zeal in taking photos of the dogs in the snow. 

          Stepping inside the monastery, you find a continuation of the holiday splendor. The monks and nuns use simple, natural enhancements to decorate for Christmas.

           A few unique holiday items have arrived at the monastery this year. We wanted to share these with you, as they made us smile and thought you would enjoy them. 

          A Christmas Book: Several copies of this awe-inspiring Christmas book arrived from Sacred Murals Studio in Tbilisi, Georgia. Philip Davydov and Olga Shalmova, owners of Sacred Murals Studio, are the instructors at the iconography workshops hosted by New Skete Monastery. Here is their description: A very special project: a book, which Olga had conceived about a year ago. It's a Christmas book printed in a limited edition of 200 signed copies on a large sheet of paper. Actual size of this book is 21 × 14.5 cm (8 × 6 in). This book doesn't have a binding; the sheet is simply cut and folded, but it has two sides, two parallel stories that happened at the same time. One is the story of the birth of John the Baptist, and the other is the story of the Nativity of Christ. You can look at each side separately if you turn the book the right way. On the red side is the story of John the Baptist, depicted according to the Gospel and the Protoevangelium of James. The blue side is the story of Christ. This side has both vertical and horizontal pages. The horizontal pages can be opened or can be accidentally flipped. But these very pages create the charm of this book. They serve as transitions from one story to another. And depending on how you turn the book in your hands, you might find yourself in one or the other narrative. You might even get confused, and this is exactly what I like most. This is what makes you feel how the fates of Christ and the Baptist were intertwined, connected. And only at the end, on the last page, I drew the scene of the Baptism, where they meet on the waters of the Jordan.

May you have a blessed Christmas season, and may the gift of faith, the blessing of hope, and the peace of His love be yours.