Leading up to a marathon called the holiday season, I’ll be sharing three things I do every year to help me enjoy the season, celebrate intentionally, and find moments to savor the generosity of God.
“Not again,” I reflected disappointedly, “Didn’t we have the exact same fight last Christmas?” Christmas is a time of wonder with thoughtful traditions, favorite people, and delicious food—all aimed at celebrating Jesus’ birth. For my husband and me, though, we were establishing the wrong tradition: fighting over the same topic year after year.
When we got married, I knew we approached holidays differently. Eric was raised in a Buddhist family in Taiwan; he didn’t celebrate Christmas until he became a Christian in college. I grew up in a Christian home in California. Because of our religious differences, we literally did not celebrate the same holidays as kids. With the arrival of our own children, our differences became more stark, just as holiday pressures increased with our growing family. Overwhelmed, I desperately wanted Christmas to be full of meaning and goodness, not strife and stress. Something had to change.
I started with my heart. What did I really want in my relationship with my husband, and how did that goal impact how we could communicate about the holidays? I realized I wanted us to be a team and for him to genuinely enjoy the holidays. Maybe his enjoyment wouldn’t look the same as mine—after all, he doesn’t have the same nostalgia for Christmas that I do—but how can we celebrate Jesus in a way that is meaningful to him, too? Slowly, I felt God help me decenter myself, my needs, my ideas, and place Jesus back at the center, which allowed me to be open to compromise and to be more intentional in including Eric in the process.
After that fight, I blocked out time on my calendar for the following October to have a conversation with Eric about the holidays. Because I saw the pattern in our fights, I wanted to get ahead of them before the holiday rush. When that date rolled around, I shared my concerns with him, so we could problem-solve together. Because we weren’t in the middle of a heated argument, it went smoothly. Conversations like this are challenging, especially if you and a spouse, family member, or friend have different expectations. When we talk it out before the holidays, we can be calm and demonstrate care for the other person, which helps everyone communicate better. I still have that time scheduled yearly, but now it’s for a holiday check-in with Eric.
We may not always be able to anticipate all of the hard conversations during the holiday season and be able to plan for them. That’s more than okay—that is just being human. What we can do is make space in our hearts to assume the best about our loved ones and begin with the goal of compromise and love. With this as our posture, hard conversations—planned or not—can potentially be less stressful and, in the end, demonstrate God’s sacrificial love—the whole reason for Christmas.