Latest / The Family Teams Podcast / How to Design a Christmas That ACTUALLY Centers on Jesus (12 Days Framework)

Transcript

How to Design a Christmas That ACTUALLY Centers on Jesus (12 Days Framework) · The Family Teams Podcast

• 0:00
  Hey everybody, welcome back to the podcast. April and I are here to talk to you guys about all things Christmas. You ready for this April? Yes. Is it early to talk about Christmas? Some years, yeah, but for some reason it feels good this year.
• 0:15
  Yeah, just got cold today. Yeah, yes. So in the month of November, we are going to talk about how to create a family team's Christmas, all the different ways. And because we want to give you guys time to do this, as you guys will discover, part of what we like to do is be kind of prepped
• 0:32
  Yeah.
• 0:52
  That takes you from December 1st all the way to December 25th in chronological order. So if you want that Advent reading plan, you can go to familyteams.com slash Christmas and get that. So everything that we're going to be describing to you guys in this month's Accelerator, the month of November, is something that Jeff and Alyssa are.
• 1:12
  Beth Key have created and they're going to be our coaches and they'll be on a podcast next week. Maybe just Jeff or Jeff and Alyssa, but we're going to walk through their traditions. So if you guys are interested in jumping into how they do Christmas, Jeff is Christmas crazed. He is.
• 1:27
  Sometimes he puts his, I think his Christmas tree up in July or something just to get in the spirit. And we're very into this as well. And so we're excited. We're going to be sharing all of our traditions. So if you guys are interested in diving into the accelerator in the month of November, you can go to familyteams.com and just click on the accelerator and join us. So the way the accelerator works is that the first week of the accelerator, so the first week of November, we give you guys the playbook. So this is like a 10-page playbook that Jeff and Alyssa have for how to do a meaningful Christmas. You'll get that on week one.
• 1:57
  Week two, you're going to get a coaching call with Jeff or with the Bethke's. They're going to be on there to describe ways for questions you guys have that stem from the podcast we're going to do next week. So that'll be the second week of November. Third week of November, you'll get a tutorial from April and I. We'll walk you guys through a lot more detail of what we're going to talk about today on the podcast, how we do Christmas. And then week four is always town hall with the priors. And so we jump on there with some of our kiddos and answer any questions you guys have about family teams online.
• 2:26
  and how things are going with your family. And so we can hit Christmas on that as well, or we're going to, we can talk about whatever, whatever would be helpful. So that's the accelerator. We do that every month. Every month we have a new theme. And so this month's theme is all about Christmas. So that's what's come up in November. So definitely sign up.
• 2:42
  If you want to be a part of the accelerator for November, make sure you sign up for the accelerator before November starts. And you'll also be able to get all the information, the accelerator, if you get that free download. So again, familyteams.com slash Christmas to get the Advent reading plan. So that's where we're headed in the month of November. I'm super excited about talking about this and really diving in.
• 3:04
  Our family, we have been slowly working our way towards a tradition that has been really meaningful for us. Maybe you can describe a little bit about what we've been working on. How do we keep Christmas as a family?
• 3:16
  We have done many things over the years. And I think we really had to wrestle with the commercialization and Santa Claus and all that stuff about, you know, when you're newlyweds and you're Christians and then you start having kids, you have to kind of entertain those questions. Like, how are we going to do this holiday or that holiday or what traditions are we going to keep? What are we going to get rid of? And so we definitely had that wrestling and we kind of came up on the other side with
• 3:43
  we're going to still celebrate Christmas. We have a few friends that have chosen not to, but we're going to keep celebrating it. And we're going to decide how to make it as much about Jesus as we can. Obviously, there's going to be some things that are just fun because they're pretty. And it's like a delightful time in the middle of the winter. Where we live, we experience the seasons. So sometimes it can be very drab come December 20th.
• 4:11
  fifth. So having things to look forward to and things that are fun and exciting is a bit of a part of it for us. But also, obviously, the main thing is figuring out how to focus on Jesus as much as we can throughout. So we, I think probably just a few years ago, really kind of developed what we currently do. We call it the 12 Days of Christmas. And we kind of pick the
• 4:39
  Look at our calendar every year, which days we are doing it changes. But 12 days leading up to Christmas, including Christmas Eve and Christmas Day, and having an event and then a scripture that's kind of attached to that event.
• 4:56
  Making it available. Most things we do just with our family, but some things we open up to other people. And sometimes the things are specific to the things we have going on for our family that year. Like, for example, last year we had a harp recital. Our daughter plays the harp and she had a recital in December. So that was one of our 12 nights.
• 5:17
  Um, and you know, a lot of times there's going to be those things that you have, like maybe your church has a kid's play or things like that, that are already going to happen and our schedules can get so busy. But if we put some intentionality around it and say, okay, we're going to allow ourselves to celebrate, you know, six days of Christmas or five days of Christmas. And these are the five events we're saying yes to. So it's a lot of the, when you approach a rhythm, you want to be intentional and
• 5:42
  And you want to say, we are going to do this event instead of this event is going to like overwhelm us. So we kind of put some intentionality around the what can become the crazy busy get lost in the commercialism of Christmas. Yeah.
• 5:58
  Yeah, I think the first time we did 12 days of Christmas, we did do them in a row and we were like, okay, that doesn't work. That's just too much. Like 12 days back to back. So that's like what April's describing is starting the day after Thanksgiving, you look at you have basically about a month's worth of days.
• 6:13
  And so you just call, you look at, you know, you might already have parties you're going to, or, you know, you may have some awesome thing going to your church. Um, so you put that in your 12 days of Christmas and basically say between, you know, basically, uh, Thanksgiving and Christmas day. Um,
• 6:30
  The way we do this is, yeah, let's pick 12 days, including all the things we're already doing, fun things. So our community, we do a nativity. We do a house church. They do this cutest little nativity play every year and a big white elephant gift exchange and things like that. So that party is always one of our 12 days of Christmas, and so all of our kids are part of that community. Yeah.
• 6:55
  So that's kind of the framework. So we just kind of say, okay, here are 12 days, we put it into like kind of a Google document, and we just start working on it. Like, okay, what are some fun traditions we could try, we can start. And if that sounds really exhausting, throw stuff in there that's really, really easy.
• 7:10
  couple of our traditions are movie nights, you know, and then we'll just throw a little bit of, you know, something fun into there. So, um, we're going to kind of go into more detail in the accelerator on like the entire 12 days and what we've, what we've kind of established as a, as a tradition, but I wanted, um, April and I go back and forth and both, uh, share, um, a couple of our favorites. So, um, April, you share one of your favorites. I'll share one of mine. We'll do that one more time and give you guys kind of a taste for what some of these traditions could look like.
• 7:39
  Okay. Something we discovered probably 10 or 12 years ago, a friend of ours let us know this was happening. This is a tradition in Cincinnati. There is a fancy schmancy restaurant in Cincinnati that has a very special event that they only do at Christmas time. And it's called the Dickens brunch.
• 8:00
  And so they put on this massive buffet brunch that is very fancy and has kind of like an old English theme things to it. Like there's figgy pudding and different things like that, but it's delicious. And there's an ice sculpture and a whole dessert buffet and...
• 8:20
  It's so fun. And another thing they do that makes it really special is they have carolers that are dressed in time period clothing. And they go around singing Christmas carols, acapella, and they kind of serenade the tables. They go around the restaurant. And it's in like an old building downtown that has all this beautiful architecture. And so it's a very experiential like experience.
• 8:46
  thing that we do and we started giving that to the grandparents as a Christmas gift so the grandparents will come with us and that was kind of like our we like to do experiences for gifts because um a lot of times people don't really need anything and we're not none of us are super into like getting stuff so we like to do experiences so that's what we do to gift to the the grandparents so that's been really fun over the years
• 9:14
  Yeah, super meaningful, awesome pictures, really cool tradition. You can make a tradition like this probably out of any kind of brunch, but I love the idea of having a Christmas brunch somewhere, maybe Sunday in your December if you want to have a formal where you can take pictures and you can really experience that kind of immersive. But yeah, we were blown away by this place. This place is next level.
• 9:39
  The way they do it. And it's kind of secret. Like most people don't even know it exists. So you might say, oh, that doesn't exist. Well, we didn't know it existed here. Like you had to kind of get the inside scoop, I guess. But yeah, shout out to I think it was Dave McMurray. Dave McMurray.
• 9:55
  He told us about this many years ago. It's like, sweet. Okay, going to the other extreme. So we do media nights on Wednesday nights. And so we usually call a few of our media nights our kind of very laid back traditions for our family. But one of them is Grinchmas. So I love...
• 10:15
  Dr. Seuss's How the Grinch Stole Christmas. I love the Ron Howard rendition of that movie. And there's other ones as well. It's just so fun. What we've been doing is there's a few parts of that, like Make the Roast Beast. This is when we did our ugly Christmas sweater contest. This is just our family. I don't think anybody else is coming over for this, but we have a big family. So anyway, it's just a really cool kind of...
• 10:39
  If you want to have one like dip into the, you know, Dr. Seuss world. And like April said, every one of these traditions has a, like a passage of scripture associated with it that we, you know, we can read and talk together about the real meaning. But we also, I just love having, there are like these kind of gospel threads, I would say, in most of these stories and including that crazy one. So anyway, the fun little tradition. So that's my first one. So April, you can give one more.
• 11:06
  I love what we started doing a couple years ago for Christmas Eve. We haven't really had a tradition around that, you know, when you're kind of trying to decide which family you're going to go to for Christmas Day or Christmas Eve or whatever. Your in-laws, like that whole conversation. For many, many years, we were doing that, going to family members' houses and having different traditions at their houses and things like that, which was wonderful. It was great.
• 11:34
  But our family, our extended families are getting so big, especially on my side, that my sister has her own 10 grandchildren. And so she's now become the hub of their Christmas time. And so we celebrate as a huge extended family at Thanksgiving time. So this just started a few years ago. So it kind of opened up our Christmas Eve to a creative idea. So we haven't done this forever.
• 12:03
  But we started doing a shepherd's dinner. And this is where we scooch all our furniture back in our living room and put a blanket or a tablecloth or whatever on the floor. And we try to put candles, sometimes they're battery powered, sometimes they're real ones, on the floor or just around us. So all the lights are off and all we have is candlelight. And Jeremy makes us a absolutely delicious shepherd's pie. And we all sit on the floor.
• 12:33
  and eat shepherd's pie and read the story about the angels appearing to the shepherds. And then we top it off with a serenade of Handel's Messiah, um,
• 12:50
  What song is it? It's actually John Michael Talbot's There's This Incredible Choral Moment That gives me just incredible chills Every time And so I play that on our loud system It's like this nice calm And all of a sudden the angels just burst out In this choral Explosion And so we kind of like It's completely dark in the room except for these candles And then we hear the angels erupting And it is
• 13:19
  Glory to God in the highest. And it's just like, whoa, just imagining, like giving us and our kids the opportunity to like enter into. What would that have been like? Try to close your eyes and imagine. You hear this choir, this angelic choir.
• 13:37
  especially back then when they weren't used to having music like that and loudspeakers and performances with the army of angels. It's a really experiential time. Everything from sitting on the floor to eating. It's a simple meal. We don't have sides and a bunch of other stuff. It's just shepherd's pie. But there's a lot of it. So you can have more helpings, but it's just a real
• 14:07
  I don't put any peas in my shepherd's pie. No peas. If you want to go on YouTube, I think I use Gordon Ramsay's shepherd's pie. Oh my gosh, it's so good. Oh, it's recipe. But yeah, like getting to have that conversation about why do the angels appear to the shepherds? What does all this mean? It really has been one of the most powerful discussions to lead you into the beginning of Christmas Day.
• 14:31
  So we're finishing kind of beginning, ending Christmas Eve, beginning Christmas Day as that evening of Christmas Eve. And it's awesome. So I love it. Okay, I'll give you guys one more. Again, if you want to get the whole download for both us and the Bethke's Traditions, we'd love to see you in the Accelerator this month. But one that we started last year that I thought was so cool, I can't wait to do this again.
• 14:57
  is we do a family arts and crafts show. And that is basically the vision is I really wanted to once a year, like kind of create almost an art gallery out of our living room and just pull together every piece of art that has been created by our family crafts art that year,
• 15:17
  And they can sell things if they want. And so we've sold a lot of things last year. And this included extended family members. But it's just so fun. It was kind of like an open house style. So four or five hours I sent out, we made a really cool little card, sent it out on social media, all of our friends just, hey, come stop by. We're going to have some cool snacks and cool drinks.
• 15:37
  Just hang out and then you can talk to each artist as you're going around the room. You can buy a few things. I think even some people commission some art for their Christmas. We do this pretty early. Usually the Saturday after Thanksgiving is when we did last year. I think we'll probably try that same time frame again.
• 15:54
  So anyway, if you're in Cincinnati, you want to stop by, let me know. We'll give you an invite to this. You can do something on a very low level as well. If your kids are young and you just... But I think I love the idea of having... You just do it for the grandparents. But it gives kids a vision for why it kind of celebrates within the family the artistic achievements of the family. And if you have musicians or whatever, I think some kind of recital that's not...
• 16:22
  based around some other group, but is based in the family. I just would love that. So if you've got different instruments, like do a recital through your family. If you're into crafts, do a craft show. You can sell some stuff. If you're into like fine art in different ways, then all those things, I just think having like one time a year where all of these things are being celebrated and enjoyed and that you're, and me as a father and grandfather getting to walk through,
• 16:50
  the artistic achievements of my family's year, just seeing it all in one place. Um, I, that was kind of the vision I had. I'm like, Oh, I really want to be in that room. And so we set that set, set our living room up to be that room, to be that art gallery. Um, it was, it was really awesome. Um,
• 17:05
  Cool. Awesome. All right. So that gives you guys a little bit of a taste of just some traditions. But man, I think I think one of the things that I'm so excited to unlock, one of the reasons why, like April said, we really still double down on celebrating Christmas is that I think this is an opportunity for family teams to really show the world like like next level family traditions, because we have a multigenerational family team.
• 17:29
  When you establish annual traditions, whatever they are, and Christmas is such a great canvas on which to do this, that is going to resonate with people. And they're going to see something different because people can relate to Christmas traditions. And oftentimes they might be resistant to other traditions, new traditions they're not familiar with. Sometimes grandparents are like, oh, why are you guys doing that tradition? Or you're starting new rhythms or whatever.
• 17:52
  This is one that usually everybody can get behind, get excited about. And so this often will be what flips people into saying, wow, let's be more intentional about annual traditions as a family. Let's do Christmas really well. And let's interject it full of meaning. So we want to help you guys do that. Again, if you want to grab that, download the Advent podcast.
• 18:11
  scripture, uh, plan. You can go to family teams.com slash Christmas and get that for free. We'd love to send that to you guys as a PDF. Um, and then yeah, join the accelerator. If you want to jump in, um, there's also a whole community conversation going on all, uh, all month long in the accelerator. You can join for a year, join for a month, however long you want, but we'd love to see you guys in there.
• 18:32
  see at the town hall, you know, and also can interact with you. And here, if you've got traditions, you're like, man, I would love to share this. This here's an idea for how we please join the accelerator. You know, if you've got pictures or whatever, you can share those with us. We'd love to just create kind of a, you know, a community of family teams who are sharing traditions together. And this is, like I said, this is a great time of year. So April, any last thoughts?
• 18:57
  Yeah, I just want to say, if you think about it, starting small and think about things you're already doing that you can maybe add a scripture to that would give it significance and deeper meaning for your kids. And then you can see some of the things that we shared. It was just like...
• 19:14
  It wasn't a super big event where we had to buy special clothes and go out at night. We were at home. We just made a movie and then funny things that kind of went with it. Or a dinner that we're going to have dinner at home anyway and made it just change the environment. So you just have to get a little creative and you can create a small tradition within that. It doesn't have to be exorbitant or expensive or...
• 19:41
  um crazy but it could be you know some things could be special that way cool yeah i encourage you guys take small steps to start with especially if young kids and it's you know it can be really exhausting but then you know eventually these get easier and easier as your kids get older they start helping they start looking forward to all these traditions and then you have a whole team again working together to pull off the traditions that that is like next step magical so good love for you guys to experience that awesome thanks so much april for jumping on here today
• 20:08
  Thank you for listening to the Family Teams podcast. If you're enjoying this content or have learned something new, please make sure to leave a rating and review and share with a friend. To stay up to date with our events, new content, and products, you can follow us on Facebook and Instagram at Family Teams.