How to Deal with All the Feels at Christmas: Bob Lepine

Hey there, Daywood Robbins here, President of Family Life, and I'm joined with my wife, Meg. Hi, everyone. And before we get started with today's show, I want to first thank you for joining with us and delving deeper into all the issues we tackle here on Family Life today.

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You can find out more later in the show or go to FamilyLifeToday.com. We come into the holiday with expectations about what this holiday is going to produce for us. We come in thinking this is a season of joy and of peace, and then we find out that it winds up being a season of disappointment and stress and sadness often.

Why is it that what we're longing for at Christmas, what our soul longs for, winds up getting taken in so many different directions? Welcome to Family Life Today, where we want to help you pursue the relationships that matter most. I'm Dave Wilson.

And I'm Ann Wilson, and you can find us at FamilyLifeToday.com or on the Family Life app. This is Family Life Today. So Christmas is coming. My favorite time of the year. It's not your favorite time. Go ahead.

Tell them what the Wilson House is like. Well, it isn't anymore, but it was for years on Christmas Day. I really love Christmas.

I love everything about it. The birth of Christ. We're celebrating this.

Families together. Food. And I'm going to admit, I love buying people gifts. Yeah, you don't even care about getting a gift. No, I don't care about that. But you go a little over the top.

When I come down into the family room and I can't see the tree because there's so many packages in front of it. This is not true. It's been very meager lately. Meager? Are you kidding me? Meager. It's been meager. The other day, I think it was Cody, one of our sons was talking about Christmas morning.

He goes, All I remember is mom's just having the time of her life and there's dad sitting on the couch like, totally depressed. Are you kidding me? No, angry. You're angry.

Because? I just, I can't believe how much, I always think like you kept to the budget, right? And you look at me like, sure I did.

Of course I did. There's no way all those gifts fit under our budget. How frugal. So I struggled with the stress of the money part of it. And Christmas, let's just admit, Christmas can be incredibly stressful.

Yeah. And there's a lot of emotions. And so Christmas is coming up. We need to talk about the emotions of Christmas. And we have the guy in the studio. Bob Lapine is back with us.

You wrote a book on the four emotions of Christmas. But Bob, let me say this. I never get to do this. Welcome to Family Life Today, Bob Lapine. This is so weird. Isn't it weird? Bob, it's so good you're here.

It feels so good to have you back. After almost 30 years of broadcasting on Family Life Today, you were never the guest. You were always the host. There was one series when I wrote my book, The Christian Husband. Actually, before that, when we found out Marianne was pregnant with David. So this is in 1994. Family Life Today had been on the air for two years. And Dennis Rainey, the founder and president of Family Life, said to me, Let's do a series where we talk about getting ready for a new baby in your home. And we'll just talk about what you guys are doing. So I was the expert for that series.

There were just a handful of times. But, you know, just you guys and I, we spent a couple of years every day here talking to folks doing this. So it just feels natural to be right back in the saddle with you. Feels like we've never missed a beat. Great to be here.

I agree. And we're excited to have you too, Bob. For our listeners that don't know, you mentored Dave and I for two to three years as we became the co-host. But you founded Family Life Today and started it with Dennis Rainey.

How many years ago? Started in 1992. Family Life began in 1976. So it had been going for 16 years doing marriage getaways, providing resources, small group materials for marriage and family. And then Dennis recognized that the needs of marriage and family were so big. We were touching thousands of people, but we needed to be touching millions of people.

And that's what opened the door for Family Life Today, which started in 1992. Yeah. So we sit here in these seats because of you and Dennis. So thank you. And so now you're the expert. And you're the expert on Christmas. Just a little thing called Christmas. But I love that you wrote a book about Christmas.

I got to tell you this, Bob, though. You know, you wrote a book about Christmas about emotions. Yes. And you're the guy that one day in the studio said that emotions are a good data point. Do you remember that? Of course I remember that. So I mean, it's not like you're the most emotional guy in the world.

How did this book come to be? Well, I recognized that at Christmastime, our emotions are heightened. Yeah.

And necessary. It's a time of year when we get more emotionally engaged, whether that's the emotions we're hoping for during Christmas or the emotions we actually experience during Christmas, which are often two different things. But honestly, the genesis of this book was sitting down with some of the team here at Family Life, and the vision was, let's create a resource.

I don't know how long it's been since you went and bought a birthday card for somebody, but birthday cards cost a ton. What if we had a book that cost about the same, three or four dollars, but it was a substantive book that instead of giving people cards at Christmas, you gave them a book that had the gospel message embedded in it that would be something that they would go, oh, I'm curious about this, that you could give to coworkers, neighbors, relatives, unbelievers, something they'd look at and go, that's interesting. I'm curious that would open up the gospel to them. As we were talking about a book like that, we kicked around ideas, and I said, what if we talked about what all of us experience at Christmas and talk about emotions, both the positive and negative emotions, but talk about how the emotion we long for.

Joy is actually the emotion that God promises at Christmas through Christ, and see if this is a way to open the door evangelistically for other people. So we don't want you to get a copy of the book. We want you to get multiple copies of the book.

At least four. Here at Year End, you know that this is a critical time for us to hear from listeners, and we've got a matching gift that's at work, and we're hoping to be able to meet that matching gift. So here early in the month, we wanted to say to listeners, help us meet the matching gift total, but if you're able to help with the donation, not only will your donation be matched, we want to send you four copies of the book, The Four Emotions of Christmas. And we'll send them along with some cards so that you can figure out who are the four people, start praying now, who are the four people you want to give this to, and use it as a way to invite them to the Christmas Eve service at your church or if your church has got a special pageant, along with the plate of cookies you're going to give them or whatever else is a Christmas gift, this is just a way of saying, Merry Christmas.

They will not be offended getting a Christmas book at Christmas time. And it's a beautiful little book, too. Yeah, and I don't know a person that wouldn't get the title of that book and wonder, what are the four emotions? That's why we decided, let's talk about emotions, and it will pique people's curiosity, and then you get into it and you think, everybody's experienced these kinds of emotions. Before I talk about that, if you want to make a donation, you can go to familylifetoday.com to donate online, or you can call us toll-free at 1-800-FL-TODAY.

That's 1-800-F as in Family, L as in Life, and then the word TODAY. That just warms my heart. Me, too! I'm so good at it! You miss saying that? I mean, you haven't said it in a while.

I say it in my sleep, you know, you do it for a quarter of a century, yeah, you just say it all the time. But this is a great gift. Well, I hope folks, in addition to the gift, I hope they'll support the ongoing work of family life because it's so needed. Well, one of those emotions I've already sort of brought up because I've felt it, but I don't think I've felt the stress anywhere near what Ann has felt, because she has said to me for 41 years, men do nothing at Christmas. Women do everything. Bob, when I was seeing these emotions and stress, I love Christmas, but most of the time I'm totally stressed at Christmas. And most of the time, I'm mad at Dave at Christmas, and I'm telling you, most of my friends feel the same way. And years ago when our kids were little, you know, and we're buying gifts and we're wrapping gifts and we're cooking food and we're making cookies, I came across this old poem, and I have to read a segment of this.

And this is what it says. See mother, see mother laugh. Mother is happy. Mother is happy about Christmas. Mother has many plans.

Mother has many plans for Christmas. Mother is organized. See mother smile. Mother smiles all the time. Funny, funny mother. See mother, see mother smile. Mother is happy.

Mother has finished shopping. See the children watch TV. See the children change their minds.

See them ask Santa for different toys. See father taking a nap. See mother go shopping again. See mother is not smiling. Funny, funny mother. And I'll cut out some of it.

Listen to the end of this. See mother, see mother wrap presents. See mother hunt for scotch tape. See mother run out of Christmas wrap. See mother hunt for Christmas cards.

Searching, searching. Go mother, see mother go, see mother go to the store seven times in one hour. See mother go fast. See mother go faster. See father taking a nap on the sofa. Run mother run. See the kids are fighting. See mother screaming.

Mother is not funny anymore. At last it's Christmas. See the happy children. See the happy father. Father loves Christmas. The children love Christmas. See father smile. See the children smile. See the happy, happy family.

Look, look. Where is mother? Mother is slumped in a chair. Mother doesn't look so good. Mother has dark circles under her bloodshot eyes. See mother stare into space. Why can't mother be happy? Happy like father. Isn't it funny? That nails it, doesn't it?

It nails it. And so we want to be happy at Christmas, but there's a lot of stress in Christmas. Well there is, and we come into the holiday with expectations about what this holiday is going to produce for us. We come in thinking this is a season of joy and of peace, and then we find out that it winds up being a season of disappointment and stress and sadness often.

That's really part of what is addressed in this book is why is it that what we're longing for at Christmas, what our soul longs for, winds up getting taken in so many different directions. And you're right, we have so much on the calendar, so many objectives that we're trying to accomplish during the month of December. If you pulled back in any other month of the year and said let's talk about this coming month, and let's add more activities than we ever have as a family during the month, let's add shopping priorities to the top of that, let's add entertainment priorities, parties, there's work related stuff, there are kids activities.

Special school functions. Exactly, you start to load up the calendar, we've all felt this, we've had situations where somebody has called and said we were thinking about getting together during Christmas, do you have any nights available, and we've got one. And we don't want to do anything with you that night because we've got one night and we need some time to do something else. All of the expectations that get piled on and we think unless we accomplish all of these things, we won't have the Merry Christmas, these are necessary components for us to have the kind of holiday that we want to have. And we found that this grows exponentially throughout your marriage and throughout your family because the more kids you have, the more activities you have, the older they get, the more activities there are added to that. And then there are traditions that just keep multiplying.

So for example, I talk in the book about how fajitas became stressful for us at Christmas, and you wouldn't think fajitas would be a big deal, right? And let's add, you've been married to Mary Ann for 43 years, you have five children and how many grandchildren? And grandkids, okay, so that's where we are, but when our kids were little in our neighborhood in San Antonio, we lived in San Antonio for a while, and we would put out luminaries, brown paper bags with sand and a candle in each one. So we would do this, I think it was Christmas Eve, you'd have the luminaries out, which meant somebody had to get the brown paper bags, the sand and the candles, right? I don't remember ever doing any of those things. You didn't do that! I thought you were going to say you did. Funny, funny mother.

Funny, funny Mary Ann. So somebody had to assemble all of that stuff, and then on the afternoon of Christmas Eve, when you don't have anything else to do, you're outputting luminaries. Now, we did this because it was beautiful and it was a nice tradition. Did you hear him say somebody put them out?

An angel. And because all of that was taking place on Christmas Eve afternoon and early evening, we weren't going to try to make dinner, we were going to go grab carryout dinner. And in San Antonio, carryout dinner means you go to the local fajita place, in our case the Alamo Cafe, and back in the day you could get a pound of fajitas with rice, with beans, we'd get a side of queso, we'd get tortillas and all the rest for like under 20 bucks. And the kids didn't eat the fajita meat much, they would just, you know, refried beans on a tortilla, they're fine, or a quesadilla, they're fine with that. So it was simple, cheap, and it became a tradition for us to have fajitas on Christmas Eve, just kind of a special thing. Well, when we moved to Little Rock, our first Christmas away from San Antonio, I wanted to keep a little of the San Antonio magic in our Christmas, so I thought we should make fajitas. Well, there's nobody selling the discount pack of fajitas in Little Rock, so I went around to the grocery stores trying to find skirt steak, which is what you use to cook fajitas with.

Nobody knew what skirt steak was at the butcher's in Little Rock. I finally found skirt steak, bought it, brought it home, and made homemade fajitas with store-bought tortillas, and it was fine. Well, the next year, it was, we should make our own refried beans. Instead of canned refried beans, we should make our own. And the year after that, what if we had both white queso and yellow queso?

And all of a sudden, this has become now an elaborate production. So after doing this for like 15 or 20 years, Marianne says, what if we skip the fajitas this year? And I looked at her like, why don't we just cancel Christmas, too? Skip the fajitas?

I mean, how can you have Christmas if you don't have fajitas? And she looked at me and says, you have no idea. And I said, I'll take care of it.

The girls and I, we'll cook the whole fajita dinner. You don't have to worry about a thing. Well, you guys know Marianne well enough that when I say you don't have to worry about a thing, she's still worrying about it.

Even when I say stay out of the kitchen, don't worry about a thing. She's still concerned that it's all going to get done properly, get done right. She doesn't have confidence that I can pull off an elaborate fajita meal, and with good reason. She doesn't have confidence on that.

But that's one component. Now, here's the other thing she's thinking of. After the fajitas on Christmas Eve, and after then we go to the Christmas Eve service at church, then we have to come home, clean the kitchen, and all the pots and pans, because tomorrow morning we have the special Christmas breakfast coming, and we've got to get all of the presents wrapped for that. And I've got to start working on getting the Christmas breakfast ready after the Christmas service. And oh, by the way, after the special Christmas breakfast, we've got the big Christmas lunch. In a 24-hour period, we're having three elaborate meals plus Christmas on top of that. And she goes, this holiday is no fun for me.

This is a holiday. Mother has bags under her eyes and is sitting slumped in the chair going, there's no joy. I thought this was going to be joy.

There's not a whole lot of joy here. So many listeners can relate. Every woman is relating to this because we struggle.

Well, don't leave the guys out. We relate in a different way, but we're all carrying something. And you want to be joyful. You want to be focused on the real meaning of Christmas. And yet you lay in bed at night, you can't sleep. I was sleepless because of the money we're spending. So how do you navigate it?

How do you dig out? Well, I don't want to downplay. I mean, there are families that have a really hard three months after Christmas because they didn't handle the money rightly. And they think to themselves, I have to do all of this with gifts and money and stuff in order for this holiday to win.

And so they are willing to go into debt. And then they find themselves in February going, why did I do that? And they're stressed out. And this is a holiday that, if you read the Bible, talks about the Prince of Peace coming to bring joy. And people are going, what happened there? Yeah, I mean, we've all been there.

How do we dig out? Because peace is what we want. Peace is not what we often feel. We have to pull back at the beginning of the season, like right now. And I think we have to look at what's coming our way, fajitas and all, right? And we have to say, okay, let's right size what this season is going to be about.

First of all, let's determine what's most important about what this season looks like. When we get to December 26th and we look back and we say, you know, that was a great Christmas. What will be the things that we'll look back on and say, that's what made it a great Christmas? And I think what you'll find is that there are going to be spiritual moments that you have as a family that are going to be more meaningful to you after the holiday is over than a lot of the busy activities that you went around and did, or a lot of the cookie making.

That may have been a sweet time and you may have enjoyed that. I'm not saying you get rid of all of it, but you have to cherry pick those things that are really going to make it good. And you have to, if fajitas are the thing you need to say no to. I mean, in recent years, we've gone out for fajitas on Christmas Eve instead of making them, because it simplifies everything for everybody.

So right sizing is the first way to get rid of the stress. And then asking the question, what are the priorities that really matter during this season? And planning out your holiday with those priorities at the centerpiece.

I'd get the calendar out, husband and wife, sit down, look at your calendar and say, okay, what do we know we've got going on? And you know you've got the fixed events, like the small group is having a Christmas party this night, and the office is having their Christmas party this night, and the kids thing is this night, and the church pageant is this night. You've got those all mapped out on the calendar. But then you need to say, okay, are we going to do a Christmas movie or two with the family?

Which ones do we want to watch? What nights are we going to schedule those? And then if you start to look and every night in December is filled up, you've got to say time out. We've got to have a rest night.

We've got to have a night where there's nothing going on. We need some margin built into our schedule here. And you start to remove some things. What doesn't get added in is the trips to the grocery store and the trips to the mall.

And that all just is expected to kind of happen in the margins. You've got to build a list of what are the priorities. There's gift buying and the gift wrapping priorities. There's the cookie making or the baking or the if you're going to go sledding one day or if you're going to some kid's activity. You've got to kind of map out the whole month.

And then I would say once you've got it mapped out, well, I'll tell you, when I worked on the art of marriage video series for family life, I got all done with the series. I showed it to the staff and everybody. And I remember Dennis coming up to me and he said, it was really good.

You did a great job on that. Go back through and cut 10 percent out. And I went, no, wait, I liked every part of it. He said, yeah, go cut 10 percent out.

And he was right. The stuff that wound up on the cutting room floor that I'd fallen in love with over the time. It was good to have it condensed down and make it more bite size for people to be able to engage with. So look at your holiday schedule, look at all of the things you want to do, and then there are going to be some good things that you're going to want to do. Cut 10 percent of them out and just say we need some breathing room and then write me a note after Christmas and say thank you for that advice. That was good advice. So you're saying be intentional.

Yeah. Make a plan together with your spouse. I would add to especially if you're the wife and you have this list of things to do, don't do it yourself. Ask your husband specifically. Give him a list.

Could you do these things this year at Christmas? That would really help me. And be specific. I know for me, I can be very picky about the things that way they're done, how they get done. And so if I'm feeling like that, I need to say to Dave, could you do it this way?

And I know that some of you are thinking my husband would never do that, my kids would never do that, but it doesn't hurt to ask. That's right. And I've also found, you know, sort of the Advent season, early December, start reading scripture. Me too.

Daily. It sort of reminds you, of course, what the real story is, but it lowers the stress. You're like, wait, wait, wait, wait, I'm getting all caught up in things that are important but not this important.

Yeah. And then when you open the scripture every day, and you know, as a preacher, I'm getting ready to preach on that, that Christmas story. I decided I got to read this multiple times and I'm sort of doing it for my sermon, but that passage in Matthew and Luke changed me.

It sort of just said, okay, slow down the RPMs. What matters right now is focus on Jesus. What matters right now is the people I'm doing life with and I need to center myself there. You're listening to Dave and Anne Wilson with Bob Lapine on Family Life Today. And Bob, this is a book that's really meant to be given away more than it is kept, is that right? When I think about this book, I'm hoping Family Life Today listeners will not order a copy for themselves. I'm hoping they'll get four copies and give them to people who they know who maybe aren't going to church regularly. My prayer for this book, and I'm so excited about it, my prayer is that this is a book that will cause a lot of people to scratch their head and go, oh, yeah, I should be thinking about this at Christmas. And then the people who give it to them, who invite them to the Christmas Eve service or follow back up and say, did you get a chance to read that book I gave you? I'd love to get your thoughts on that book. I'd love to hear what you thought about that book.

I read it and maybe you read it just so you can have the conversation with them later on. But wouldn't it be great if this Christmas season there were thousands of Family Life Today listeners giving tens of thousands of these books to non-Christians and we see what God does with them? Yeah, that's really exciting to think about. And that's why we're excited to be able to offer you a few things this December. It's four copies of The Four Emotions of Christmas by Bob Lapine and six greeting cards hand selected by David and Meg Robbins. These make a great tool to share with the loved ones in your life. That's our gift to you when you go to FamilyLifeToday.com and help families this Christmas season. And thanks to some generous donors, your gift, whatever you give, will be matched dollar for dollar up to two million dollars. Again, head over to FamilyLifeToday.com or give us a call at 800-358-6329. That's 800 F as in family, L as in life, and then the word today. And I just wanted to remind you that today is the final day to get up to 60 percent off 12 products on our Family Life Christmas gift guide.

You can head over to FamilyLifeToday.com to check out that guide and grab a great gift for someone this holiday season. Let's talk about the holiday blues. No, no, I'm not talking about this type of blues. I'm talking about the sadness you can feel around this time of year. Well, tune in tomorrow on Family Life Today because David and Wilson are joined again with Bob Lapine to talk about finding joy during this holiday season. I mean, we sing about it.

Why not actually experience it? On behalf of David and Wilson, I'm Shelby Abbott. We'll see you back next time for another edition of Family Life Today. Family Life Today is a production of Family Life, a crew ministry helping you pursue the relationships that matter most.