Original picture: Merrick's Art

[dropcap]H[/dropcap]ave you survived your ward Christmas party? Did kids disappear? Was all hope lost? Was the program too long? Did Santa make an appearance? This is serious stuff!

Tiffay is very bothered by Geoff's, Al's, and Devin's thoughts on the forthcoming Real Housewives of Salt Lake City, going as far as saying she has "street cred" on this issue. Do. Not. Mess. With. Tiffany. Either way, the Sisters are excited now that the cast has been revealed, a member of which is LDS and owns a tequila company....

Did you catch the Tabernacle Choir's Christmas concert? How did such an affair become such a tradition? The Deseret News has the answer.

In more Christmas news, what have the prophets said about Santa Claus? If this matters to you — and it shouldn't — LDS Living compiled a list containing such pertinent information.

Here's a tragic tale of competing visions of what it means to "sustain" leaders and how it relates to LGBT rights. A young missionary from Idaho, serving in California, favored same-sex marriage. His stake president approved of him going to the temple and going on a mission. While in the field, the missionary lost his recommend. His mission president did not believe that he could sustain his Church leaders if he favored same-sex marriage, and a Seventy agreed. The problem? You can't be a missionary if you don't have a temple recommend.

Related to same-sex marriage, we reported about 18 months ago that Family Search would be updated to allow records for same-sex couples. That effort has taken many years because the back-end infrastructure has required a complete rewrite to support such relationships. Now, the Church has announced that the functionality is live.

Jeremy Goff is something of an influencer on Facebook. But sometimes noted bloggers are desperate for content, which brings us to his recent piece, "Have I Covenanted to Go to Church When I Am Sick?" No, you have not. Look, we've written stuff in desperation for clicks, too, but, come on....

The supposedly Latter-day Saint-friendly Trump administration, via the Department of Homeland Security, is dramatically increasing the cost to access records - by 500%. Mitt Romney is trying to stop it.