Sunday marks the first day of Advent, the first of four Sundays before Christmas.

– The Nativity stable at Canton Lutheran Church will be silent this year, breaking from a community tradition of gathering for a live Christmas performance. Instead, churches in this rural corner of South Dakota are grappling with how to approach an Advent filled with quiet mourning after the coronavirus tore through the region. South Dakota and North Dakota, states largely spared from the worst of the pandemic during the spring and summer, have seen a frightening pace of death since October. “Advent is the season when we look forward, and long and wait for that new life to come upon us,” the Rev. How do you do that when you can’t give them a hug?” said Thies, the pastor at Canton Lutheran.