The holiday celebrations in Unitarian Universalist congregations reflect the six Sources of our faith.

Many Unitarian Universalists (UUs) and our congregations celebrate Christian holidays like Christmas, Jewish holidays like Passover, and Winter Solstice, among others. Our holiday services use the stories and traditions creatively, calling us to our deeper humanity and our commitment to the good.

In addition to religious holidays, UUs also honor secular holidays including Earth Day, Martin Luther King Jr. Day, Labor Day, Indigenous Peoples Day, and Thanksgiving.

Among other seasonal events, our congregation in Livermore traditionally celebrates the Flower Ceremony and the Water Communion:

Flower Ceremony

The first Flower Ceremony was held in Prague, on June 24, 1923, led by Rev. Norbert Čapek. For decades, this beloved tradition and its powerful history have provided meaning to hundreds of UU congregations. Celebrated in the spring, our congregation holds the Flower Ceremony by gathering all the flowers that each member has brought, then blessing the bouquet. Each person then receives a different flower than what they brought, without regard for where they came from or who had brought them. Through the Ceremony, we are reminded that many different flowers can make a beautiful bouquet, and many different people can make a community. All have value and all are important.

Water Communion

The Water Communion, also sometimes called Water Ceremony, was first used at a Unitarian Universalist (UU) worship service in the 1980s. Many UU congregations, including this one in Livermore, now hold a Water Communion once a year, at the beginning of the new church year in September.

Members bring to the service a small amount of water from a place that is special to them, and during the appointed time in the service, people one by one pour their water together into a large bowl. As the water is added, the person who brought it tells why this water is special to them. The combined water is symbolic of our shared faith coming from many different sources. It is then blessed by the congregation, and it is later boiled and re-used in the garden.