Embracing Grace, Fun, and Family This Holiday Season

Well, maybe you're excited to hear Christmas music or you think it's too early. We are only a couple of weeks away from Thanksgiving here in the US. So today on Focus on the Family, we're going to give you some ideas for approaching the holiday season with some grace, some fun, and some focus on God and your family.

Your host is Focus on the Family president, Jim Daly, and I'm John Fuller. Okay, John, so the world kind of breaks into two halves. We got the dog people and the cat people, but there's another test.

It's a very chaotic thing. This is another test, and that is Christmas music before Thanksgiving or after Thanksgiving. Well, I am definitely an after Thanksgiving person married to a pre-Thanksgiving person. True story.

Isn't that opposite the track? It's amazing. October 1st of this year, Deena was listening to Christmas music. And so I am, by virtue of having a desire to have a happy marriage, a pre-Thanksgiving guy. You've moved to pre, totally.

Okay. Well, I think Jean and I are in the same boat. It's so good to have Jean here to verify my statements.

Jean, what are you? Are you on the pre-Thanksgiving music side or the after Thanksgiving side? I am after Thanksgiving, but I mean, I secretly do enjoy if I'm shopping and I hear the Christmas music in October. Because you're typically a purist, so I'm pleased that you're expanding with wisdom.

But I won't listen to it in my car until after Thanksgiving. Okay, there you go. Well, we're going to have a great discussion today about sacred holidays and what you can do. We have a wonderful guest, two wonderful guests to talk about this. But, you know, sometimes it's hard and there's a lot that goes into this, but Becky Kaiser's with us today. And she has written a wonderful book called Sacred Holidays.

And that'll be the point of our discussion. It really will be great to unpack this. There's so much stress associated with the holidays, so much you have to get right. And Becky is a great person to talk about this. She is the founder and CEO of Sacred Holidays, which is a ministry dedicated to helping women find less chaos and more Jesus during the holidays.

Everybody just said, yay! Yeah, indeed. And I think husbands want our wives to experience that as well. We want happy wives.

So look for the book Sacred Holidays. We've got the link in the episode notes. And Jim, you mentioned Becky is married to Chris and they have three young girls, ages five to ten. Oh man, Becky, welcome to Focus. Thank you. You're right in the zone.

Right in the zone. So how do you have time to be here? Right. I made time because after six months of being quarantined together, my husband and I were like, we can leave the house for six days without them.

Yes. Who's got the kids? My mother-in-law who was like Mary Poppins, amazing.

Mary Poppins, that's wonderful. They are having more fun with her than they would have if I was home. Well, it is good to have you. And of course, always good to have you, Jean. Well, it's always good being here.

Yeah. All right, Becky, you haven't always enjoyed the holidays. I think so many women are going to relate to this because we're going to get to some of the, I think, spiritual and emotional components to the holidays. In fact, you say that Thanksgiving Christmas used to make you revert to your 13-year-old self.

I like that. But did you mean it in a positive way or not so positive? 100% in a negative way that even it started in college when I first realized I would go home for Christmas break just expecting it to be exciting and fun and realizing for whatever reason when I'm around my family and the same traditions, I revert back to the 13-year-old version of myself that's not so positive and great to be around. That's called triggers, by the way.

Yes, totally. Totally would get triggered. And then I noticed it when I was 26 and when I was 30 and when I was 35.

It just kept, it didn't stop. And so I wanted it to be different for myself as well as for my kids because we all, like you said at the beginning, that husbands are nodding their head and I will often have husbands say, I bought the book for my wife or kids bought it for their mom because women naturally, we want it to be so special. But let me ask you to the, you know, the person that's wondering, okay, what are my triggers? What were a couple of examples of those triggers for you?

I, you know, I don't even know if it's just being in the same environment of your childhood. As I got older, it would be the financial triggers. It would be having to tote my little bitty kids to my in-laws and my parents.

Chris and I both come from divorced home. So as we call it the Texas tour, going to four houses in a week during Christmas, just those stressors make you go crazy. And then if you're hosting it, it's no longer as an adult, quite as fun as it was when you're a kid, because you, especially as women, what's on the meal plan? Who's getting presents? Who's wrapping presents?

How do we make it fun for everyone else but us? Jean will look tired just listening. I was gonna ask you what we you know, is this is that resonating? Oh, yes, yes, yes, yes.

And it's just that idea that we feel like we have to make it so perfect and textbook. Okay, let me let me hit these trigger words shame and regret. Yeah.

Is that part of it? Do you feel shame at times that it's not as perfect as you want it to be? Or regret? Maybe for me, I don't know about shame. I think comparison would be the bigger like route for maybe me, especially in a social media world. But yeah, regret or envy of other people's holidays, and then working hard to try to make it like everyone's best picture they had on Instagram.

Yeah, but it is so true, though, we get distracted. And in fact, Jean, I love something that you know, you were aware of. It was Thanksgiving, I think, and it was all kind of imploding in on you.

And I'm waiting for you to jump out there. And what happened? There was one particular Thanksgiving that I was we were hosting your family. Yeah. And, and the boys were very young. And Jim always played football on Thanksgiving morning. I just want to say I played that until I was 52.

Yes. Well done. And when our boys were young, and I was hosting his family, I was resenting that he wasn't home in the morning.

And all the ladies are saying you go girl, you should be resentful. And I wanted everything to be perfect for his family. And I can remember the boys were napping. And his family was having so much fun. They were enjoying each other.

They're laughing. And I was irritated that they were being so loud with their frivolity that they were going to wake my boys and upset their nap schedule. And then we had a couple of nephews. And they came over and were three hours late. And I was really upset about that.

And then to top it off, my homemade roles weren't rising. And I remember, I was like ready to explode. I was gonna crumple on the floor in tears. And that night, I felt the Holy Spirit impress on me specifically with our nephews. You know, if that had been your little brother, yeah, they came so late. Would you be angry? And I thought, Well, no, I adore him.

He can do no wrong. And I really felt the Holy Spirit impress on me. Well, that's how I feel about your nephews. And I realized, I had just missed it. I was so into the perfection of the day and my idea of what it should look like and the homemade pumpkin pies that weren't setting and I missed it. And I was angry and it was tired and I didn't enjoy it. And I really changed. After that day, I really learned to embrace the relationships.

And plus it was absurd. Jim's family is so easy. And they're so fun. And but they are a little late. It doesn't matter. I don't make anything anymore.

I don't I, I make the turkey and I don't even know if that counts. And I it's good. I thank you.

I am so look forward to it now and enjoy the people. Becky, this is exactly the point of your book, right? This is what you're getting to the heart of.

So, Dr. celebration, how do you look at this? Well, I think that speaks into the shame a lot of women struggle with of they overreact. And Jean, in that situation, you paused and listened to the spirit and adjusted.

But I think sometimes we're so busy, we don't do that. And the biblical story I talked to women about a lot during this is the very popular story of Mary Martha. And sometimes Martha is the villain of the story. But we forget Martha's the one that invited Jesus into the home. And so just one if you're the woman who is struggling with shame of I'm getting this all wrong.

Remember, you're the one that has invited him into your holidays. But Jesus then said to Martha, he was like, Why is she not helping me, which we all do with all the things that we can then listen to Jesus speak to us just as you listen to the Spirit speak to you and just say, Martha, Martha, you are anxious and distracted about many things. One thing is necessary. And so that's where any holiday The one thing that's necessary is that we as women focus a little bit less on all the people which is so good. Or we take the flight attendants advice and instead of putting the mask on, not just our children, but our husband and our grandparents and our cousins and nieces and neighbors and teachers and all the things and instead say, Okay, I need to breathe in fresh oxygen in life because I have more to offer my kids if I am actually following Jesus than if I just try to brainwash them to follow Jesus, but they never see mom do it themselves.

Wow, that's powerful. Becky, you encourage parents to not put too much emphasis on the kids. That's what you're talking about. I think that's an easy thing to do, especially if your childhood was lean. Yeah, I was guilty of that.

I've been guilty of that because, you know, we didn't have money to go to amusement parks or do things. So I've probably overdone that I'm looking at gene affirmation. But you really encourage parents to pull back a little don't overdo it when it comes to presence with the kids and things like that.

Yeah. And that that's just our cultures like more and we feel like we need and we want to give our kids the very best. So there's nothing wrong if you have that desire of like, I want to just spoil them and do all of this. But again, it goes back to what is Christmas about for you and your family. And so ask yourself, ask your husband, what do we want this to be about? And for us, we realized my husband and I realized we don't want it to be about them getting everything. Now, we still stuff the stockings, and we still have presents galore, and we have all the things, but we scale it way back, they get a handful of presents, and we try to teach them instead of building their own Christmas wish list, they have a birthday wish list, but they make wish lists of what do they want to give instead of what do they want to receive. So when people ask them on the street, what are you hoping Santa brings you from Christmas, they look at me like bug-eyed, like, what do I say?

And I'm like, what are some things that you would like to get? But tell them what you want to give Grammy this year. Tell them what you want to give daddy. Just shifting that conversation of let's make it a- Jesus came as the greatest gift we ever have. So we want to give to other people this time of year.

It's not like about receiving everything. Birthdays are for receiving. Christmas is for celebrating that he came. That's good.

That's good. Hey, you touched on this, but I want more elaboration from you, Becky, on the birthday celebration because I love that idea. I mean, everybody gets a birthday party and you have done this now at Christmas because it's Jesus's birthday party.

What does that look like? So celebrating during a happy birthday Jesus party you can do. We did this a lot when all my kids were super young where you make a cake and you light a candle. One year, my daughter even just like wrote a whole list of like her most hundred favorite things about Jesus. And that is not to like say we are the perfect family because I have another daughter that's like I want nothing to do with that.

So do not think we are the perfect family, but there's times where you're going to get markers of we're doing this right. And they love Christmas so much that I mean, I told y'all before the show of it finally hit 88 degrees in Texas and they're like, it's finally Christmas. I was afraid that if I shifted the perspective from what I grew up with, that Christmas would no longer be a whimsical for them.

And it is just as whimsical by shifting the perspective or the focus off of them and putting it on what matters. So birthdays is when we go all out for them. But for Christmas, we try to do where we do celebrate Jesus's birth. We find our own meaning. We just celebrate his focus, reading the story, reenacting the story, and just shift imperfectly.

I say in the book all the time, baby steps. Like women are going to want to go all in and do the 25 things they find in the book or on Pinterest. And every year I had one thing. So maybe this year the year one thing is an Advent study for yourself. You know, I had never thought about it this way, but you know, this is the celebration of Jesus's birth. It's just like human beings to say, hey, Lord, we'll give you a gift, but I'm going to get a gift too. I'm going to get 20 gifts.

I'm going to get 20 and we'll give you a birthday cake. Isn't that funny? That's humanity at the core.

100%. Our guest today on Focus on the Family is Becky Kaiser, and we're so glad to have her here sharing some ideas from her book called Sacred Holidays. She has a ministry by the same name, and we're so glad to have that book available. It's 800, the letter A in the word family. We're stopped by the episode notes for the link. Becky, I think a lot of wives and moms are going to lean into this next question. That is, you were at a candlelight service at Christmas. You were just feeling kind of blank. You weren't into it and you weren't feeling the presence of the Lord because of all the stuff that you were having to do.

I think so many women can appreciate that and understand that they know exactly what I'm saying. How did you recognize that and then how did you get a grip on that? It's okay. Come on, shake off this feeling. Yeah, that was that first Christmas that I told you when I had a young baby and I was at my mother-in-law's church and as we all have done a hundred times where we're holding the candle singing Silent Night and I'm holding it and I'm listening to the words and I'm realizing and tears just start streaming down my face. I've missed it. I've missed the whole point of all of this, but man, the presents are wrapped and things look great and all of our outfits are coordinated for the pictures. Yes. Well, and let me say, and you're also probably getting praise for all that too.

All of it. Oh, this is amazing, Becky. We have done all that we could do that is approved by all the people, but internally I had missed focusing on Jesus. I had definitely skipped my time with the Lord so that I could wrap presents till late at night or plan things out or travel more. And so that was the trajectory where things changed for me.

And that's where I started taking baby steps. And I was like, what is Advent? I'd never really heard of it in the denomination I was a part of.

And so I started looking for Bible studies and resources that could help me focus on God's word during this time to lean into the Christmas narrative, which is so amazing, but we only study it one Sunday a year usually. Yeah, no, and it's so true. I'm thinking of some advice for the husbands because we've talked a lot about the ladies right now, but you know, 10 o'clock the night before Christmas morning and your wife says, I picked up that bicycle that needs to be put together. Oh, are you referring to personal experience? I can't recall that ever happening. I remember you had a friend. No, it was a friend. It was a friend.

No, I think that did happen one year. I thought, wow, Jean's just done a great job. And then she laid it on me like at 10 o'clock and I am not a night person.

I was out. I think I put the handlebars where the seat should go and everything else. But, but how do we get the husband's help where it's needed? And then any advice for the husbands not to have a bad attitude about this? Well, I mean, I think it's the same advice for the husbands as it is for the wives of it's shifting your perspective and shifting your perspective from what matters to you, which may be be I'm tired after a long day at work, I'm going to sit here and instead see your wife as I'm sure y'all talk about your wife talk about all the time of serve your wife and love her and ask her, hey, there's a lot more on your plate right now. You have all the normal stuff, but now you got the holiday stuff too. What can I help with?

Yeah, that is so good. It's hard. And wives, I think just humbly ask your husband, Hey, I need your help. Like sometimes we put the burden on ourselves that we have to do it all. And that we're not being a helpful wife if we're not doing it all. And instead asking and Becky, I earlier you said you and Chris hadn't really discussed some of this. How often do you think it is that couples have separate expectations, but don't talk about it?

I would say all the time. It was super helpful for us that we started doing several years ago is we will sit down before the holidays and we'll lay out expectations. And so even down to, okay, this, we're going to be around this family member. And I know this family member is either emotionally hard for you to be around or stresses you out, or they're always going to be laid.

And how are we going to handle that? And a counselor gave me that advice of when you shift your perspective for other people, it changes. And so there was one family member that was really hard for me and I was just disappointed every time.

Right. And she said, what if you just expected this person to always be that way? And that doesn't mean we don't have hope and faith that God can change the circumstances, lower the bar, but we lower the bar to reality of, I'm just going to expect that they're going to be who they've always been pray and hope that it changes.

And when that happened, my relationship with that person changed completely because I was no longer disappointed, but I could love and accept them for who they are never perfect. But again, that's why it's so important to sit down with your spouse and talk through even down to like, okay, I know I need my hour in the morning to study God's word and to pray. Where am I going to get that? When we go to your mom's house, when we go to my parents' house and pre-planning just, it's an hour long couple day at home over a good cup of coffee to lay out all your expectations. That is a really good, that's the idea.

That's worth listening to the program right there. Let me also, this was a fun one. You know, because Christmas we think, especially if things are tight and I think this Christmas for a lot of families, things are going to be tight and you do the dollar store runaway and you had some fun experiences. I was giggling when I was reading the material.

So fun. So as I said before, we come from divorced homes, so you can imagine the amount of grandparents and aunts and uncles and cousins is many. And we have three girls. And so for them to each buy presents for all of those, we would be bankrupt.

We just don't have that kind of money. And so one year, I don't remember where we got the idea from, but we were like, let's just take our daughter to the dollar store. And we made a list at the time she couldn't read.

So I printed off a picture of each grandparent and aunt and uncle and cousin. And we do not control it at all. What we control is that every item is a dollar because we've taken them to a place where things are only a dollar. Right. But what did grandpa's get?

Yes. My grandpa that year got a women's world crossword puzzle. So it's funny from that to two years ago, my father-in-law had cancer and that the next Christmas, one girl got him a hairbrush.

Another got him a Barbie hairspray. And they are learning how to give gifts in a really thoughtful way without me being like, oh, that's $20. We can't afford it. I'm sorry.

No. And they're learning how to be generous in a way that works within our budget. No, that is so good. And it's great not to... Here's the error we often make as parents. We try to correct it ahead of time, right? Oh, don't buy that.

And you're not doing that. We can handle it there because for three girls and all the family was still under $100 for all of it. Now wrapping all those presents is a whole nother thing. Gift bags were invented. Gift bags. And tissue paper. Yes.

All right. There is also a heavy side to the holidays. I mean, loneliness spikes, depression spikes, those kinds of things along with all the celebration. And it may be the intensity of both just goes up. And Becky, I understand you recently dealt with that when your grandpa passed away.

Describe how that can put a damper on the holidays. Well, probably be impossible for me to talk about it without crying. But I experienced grief for the first time last Thanksgiving because my grandpa was just the rock of our family.

He was... We all have one of those in our family usually where they just hold it together. And I was really close to him and he passed away. And it was the first time where I had an empty chair.

Thank you. It was the first time he passed me a tissue where I had an empty chair at Thanksgiving. And I just remember being crushed by it. And I had actually written a grief chapter before I'd experienced a deep level of grief because so many people deal with it. And man, in 2020, we all have dealt with trauma, whether it's losing someone to COVID, losing someone just because life happens or divorce or sickness and diagnosis and serious financial issues for people. It has been a hard and heavy year for all of us. So we're all going to have a level of grief this year. And what I learned and one of the things in the book that as I asked other people for advice is just to give grief of permission, a seat at the table. And so it's saying, when I walk into the house and I see his chair empty, that I can just be sad. And my husband knows, okay, I'm going to take the girls outside and let you have your moment just to grieve that he's not there. But also just to give yourself permission that in the same moment, you can laugh when everybody's dancing to white Christmas and doing all the funny things.

And it's giving grief a seat at the table and saying there's space for it. Cause I think as Christians, we all say, I just need to be fine. Like I'm fine. It's fine.

Everything's fine. Praise Jesus. And there's this misperception that we can't not be okay at Christmas time because it is a lack of faith in so many ways. It honors him and his memory because man, it's a hole in your heart and that's okay. Yes. And Jesus grieved and we can grieve as well.

Absolutely. In that context, you have the story of your mom. I mean, we had that tradition of being at your mom and dad's all those years and your dad passed away and you know, not long ago, your mom passed away and things change. How have you dealt with that?

Yeah. So my mom hosted Christmas every single year of her adult life. And like your grandpa, you know, she was the Christmas rock and she passed away four months before Christmas.

And I thought it would be nice. We still had my parents' home for my siblings and all of our families to meet for Christmas again at my parents' house. And I used my mom's Christmas decorations and decorated the house.

I didn't make anything. None of us did like my mom would have, but that was okay. And I mean, it was beautiful.

It was bittersweet. And we were able to grieve and laugh and enjoy it. And then the next Christmas I realized, you know, we needed a different tradition and we were able to meet at a neutral location. I invited my siblings and we changed it. And actually we met up until Christmas Eve because my brother and his wife were going to spend it with her family. So we, you know, we really changed it and we did a white elephant gift that was new gift exchange and it was fun and different. And I still though, I bought a little two foot high Christmas tree and I brought my mom's lights and I put them at the base of the tree. So we still acknowledged that my parents weren't there and a brother who is gone and just made it different. And I think the beauty of it is you, you know, new traditions are born out of those painful traditions that, you know, you've known since a child really. And like you said, this year of the pandemic and everything else happening, many people are probably going to have to find new traditions for all kinds of reasons.

Becky, as we close here, we're right at the end. And I want you to touch on your idea of not being that Christian. Cause I think it, again, it's such a right move to talk about Christ. And, and I, the question is, you know, obviously what do you mean by that? To not be that Christian. Right.

Yeah. So in the book I have the eight holiday chapters, but then I have six common struggle chapters. And one of those is not being that Christian.

And that is the two camps of those who completely disregard it because they don't know how to do it and those who overdo it too much. And so how to not be that Christian is again, let's sit down for 30 minutes with a journal, piece of paper and ask the Lord, where have I gotten off? Like, am I in the camp where I'm missing Jesus? Or am I in the camp where I'm like making it maybe a little too over spiritual and I'm missing living in life and loving people. So where I would say is sit down and evaluate that and then focus your, your heart, like, what is your relationship like with the Lord?

And where can you move forward on that? And as you are in scripture, as whether you're doing an Advent study or whether you're whatever, if your church is doing something, when you're doing those things, your heart's going to shift. If you're not focused on all the other things and you're in God's word and you're praying, you're going to find the right way because God leads us into the right path.

When we put our eyes on him. Well, Becky and Jean, this has been really encouraging, a lot more fun than I thought. I must admit I was coming in thinking sacred holiday. But this really has been good. It's been full of the great wisdom, Becky and Jean that you both have learned and how you've applied it.

So thank you for being with us and let me just turn to the listener. I want to highly recommend sacred holidays. I think Becky laid out so nicely what the book's about, what she's trying to accomplish.

It's one of those tools I think you'll really benefit from. And I hope you'll get a copy here from Focus on the Family. You know, of course, it's not just limited to Christmas and Thanksgiving. As Becky said, it's got a number of holidays in there. So look for your copy of sacred holidays.

The link is in the episode notes. And of course, John, if folks can make a gift to help us with the ministry here, we'll send you a copy of Becky's great book as our way of saying thank you. Yeah, we especially need your support at this time of year. And if you're part of the support team, thank you. If you haven't yet joined, now's a great time to hear from you.

And again, our number is 800-A-FAMILY. Becky and Jean, again, thanks for being with us. Thank you. Thank you. It was a pleasure. And I hope for all the listeners that we can all focus on relationships and Christ this season. Good work. And ourselves some grace in pursuing Jesus. Yeah, well said. And on behalf of Jim Daly and the entire team, thanks for joining us today for Focus on the Family. I'm John Fuller inviting you back as we once again help you and your family thrive in Christ.