I didn’t spend more than ten minutes in Second Life today, only enough time to grab a quick screen capture. But on Sunday night I did spend an hour or two scanning for Christmas-related activities in Second Life. My quick scan revealed:

• Dozens of Christmas-related sales (see image below)
• Over 150 Christmas-related events
• A wide variety of locations with Christmas decorations, including a few nice nativity scences (see image below)
• A handful of Christmas parties scheduled, including one that gives prizes for the best costumes.
• Some Christmas-related meetings from a few Christian groups
• Second Life Churches adding Christmas decorations (See picture below from ALM CyberChurch)

What I had hoped to find were live nativity scenes, Christmas services, etc. I didn’t find any, although I only looked for an hour or two and they may have been announced only to members of a given group. I have visited many of the Second Life churches over the past year and attended several hosted events (including worship services). It is an interesting element of cyberculture, efforts to represent traditional and new strands of spirituality in the digital world.

Of course, Christmas is an interesting one. A central teaching surrounding Christmas is the Incarnation, God coming in the flesh. Think about that one for a moment- celebrations of the Incarnation in virtual worlds.