Emotions and their role in human life have always been an important part of philosophical research. The purpose of this article is to provide the reader with an introduction to how emotions have been studied in analytic philosophy in recent times and how these theories have been or can be applied to the study of religious emotions. I explore in this article existing lines of research and try to open new ones, beginning by characterizing the philosophical approach to emotions and thereafter dividing current theories of emotion into three different categories. After this, I discuss the possible special characteristics of religious emotions, their cognitive role in religious life, and their significance for the good life.

This article inspects the White Christmas as a socially constructed sacred time and place, with snow as an indispensable element in both. Lack of snow generates strong negative emotions, which I interpret as solastalgia: melancholy and desolation caused by environmental change. Research material for this study comprises news articles from two major Finnish media outlets, focusing on Christmas snow conditions. Using qualitative content analysis and theoretical framework of theories of the sacred, I seek to interpret the emotions expressed in the news articles as solastalgia, which I then connect with theories of the sacred. Thus, solastalgia might be caused not only by the changes in the environment but also by the deficiencies in the shared concept of how Christmas should looks. Finally, I explore whether there is a connection between solastalgia caused by a snowless Christmas and climate change in general. The results show that culturally shared meanings attached to Christmas may separate it from mundane time and climate change. Recognizing this is a valuable asset in addressing climate change.

In this article, we examine the effects of digitalisation caused by the COVID-19 pandemic on the ritual renewal in one Evangelical Lutheran congregation in Finland. We examine ritual improvisation in relation to the use of social media and the changes it has brought to social relations and perceptions of authority within the studied congregation. In light of the ethnographic interview data, we analyse the development of the church's social media broadcasts and their effects on the church's authorities and their sense of community. The article shows that ritual improvisation was a collaboration between church workers, their family members, and participants in a pandemic situation, especially in relation to indoor gathering restrictions, the Facebook platform, church traditions, resources, and workers' technical skills and equipment. With the help of ritual improvisation, a soft authority and ritual life emphasising everydayness, personality and social media community were developed.