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Why We Celebrate This BIBLICAL Fall Festival (And How You Can Start) · The Family Teams Podcast

• 0:00
  It was such an obvious when it did become and still is our kid's favorite holiday. We wanted to set a culture in our home of constantly talking about God. Like it says in Deuteronomy 6, we wanted this just to be constantly spoken about and actually physically walked out. This is such a powerful reminder to think through, like, this earth is not our home. We're living like exiles in this temporary place, and we have our eyes fixed on a home yet to come.
• 0:30
  Hi, welcome to the Family Teams Podcast. Our goal here is to help your family become a multi-generational team on mission by providing you with biblically rooted concepts, tools, and rhythms. Your hosts are Jeremy Pryor and Jefferson Bethke, and we can't wait to chat about all things family.
• 0:48
  Hey everybody, welcome back to the podcast. Okay, this is an Accelerator podcast. We are looking forward to the month of September coming up. And what we want to do in preparation for what's coming in October is talk about fall festivals, fall holidays. There's these biblical holidays that I think are just fun to explore. And so we've got on the podcast today Brent and Katie Krutoff. Krutoff, thanks for jumping on here today.
• 1:13
  Yeah, thanks for having us. Thank you for having us. It's great to be back. Yeah, they are our first, I think, second-time community coaches, right? Oh, wow. Yeah, congratulations, guys. Yeah. So Brett and Katie did such an incredible job helping us with the spring holidays, and I was like, okay, that was so much fun. I think there was such good feedback. A lot of people got to experience Passover and Christmas.
• 1:37
  And Pentecost or Shavuot, different elements of those that I just love the way that Brent and Katie have really done this with their family. And so we're like, hey, let's like, you know, what do they call it? Pull it back, send it back. What do kids say these days? You're asking the wrong people.
• 1:58
  Yes. Play it back? Yeah, what was it? Play it back? Play it back, maybe? Yes, we're going to do that. So we're going to do it again, but for the fall holidays. So I'm going to dive into why we do this a little bit. I'm going to get, I want to kind of dialogue with Brent and Katie. And then I just, I'm really excited for you guys to hear just practically how to do this. So just to kind of big picture, the accelerator, every single month we pick a theme and we drill deep into this theme to try to help you guys, give you tools for how to build a multi-generational family team.
• 2:28
  And some of these tools are going to be like, whoa, that's awesome. Let's do that. And other tools, you'll be like, no, we're going to pass that one. That's fine. We just want to give you guys lots of great tools to work with. And that's how we see these holidays. These are not things that we feel obligated to celebrate in order to keep the law. We believe Jesus perfectly kept the law when he came and he died on the cross. And so we have already perfectly kept all of the holidays. Good job, guys, everyone. You know, you're in Christ. You've kept the holidays. But it is really amazing to get to experience them.
• 2:58
  You know, this is an option in the same way that you don't have to celebrate Christmas. You know, you don't have to celebrate birthdays, but they can do an incredible job of forming our identities. And oftentimes what I find is that, you know, moms and dads who are trying to build family teams are looking for tools for how to deepen family identity. And so something like 20 plus years ago, our family started just with one biblical holiday.
• 3:21
  and it was the one we're going to spend most of our time talking about here, Sukkot. And it did more than any other thing practically, besides maybe our Sabbath dinners, to help form our family's identity. I was blown away by how well God designed this holiday. And one of the reasons we get excited about these is because they are God-designed holidays. And there's some cool themes. And so, yeah, just keep an open mind if you've never, if you're like, what the heck is Sukkot? Or what are these holidays? Just to kind of give you guys a real...
• 3:49
  broad brush. There are seven biblical holidays in the Torah, the first five books of the Bible. Four are spring holidays and three are fall holidays. So the spring holidays that we talked about last time were Unleavened Bread, Passover, Firstfruits, and Shavuot. Those are the first four, and we also call that Pentecost, right? So those are the spring holidays. We believe those were all fulfilled in Jesus's first coming, right? Jesus died on Passover. He was buried on Unleavened Bread. He rose again at Firstfruits and sent the Holy Spirit on Pentecost.
• 4:19
  And so we look forward to, and Paul says that the next thing is this trumpet blast, right? And so we are looking forward to the second coming of Christ. And so the fall holidays are the Festival of Trumpets, the Festival of Yom Kippur, which is the Day of Atonement, and the last one we're going to spend our time talking about.
• 4:36
  Sukkot. And so we want to just give you guys real practical ways. If you want to, if you want to build identity into this, then we would love to, to drill into this. So I'd love to hear from, from you guys. What, what are some things that like maybe kind of give, kind of take a big step back and give us a, like a big picture. Why did you guys decide to start investing in, in these fall holidays in particular? What did you find that this, this did for your family?
• 5:01
  Yeah, you know, I think, like you said, these holidays to me kind of felt like tools that we could use to help deepen our kids' faith and belief in the story. And so we wanted to set a culture in our home of, you know, constantly talking about God, like it says in Deuteronomy 6, 4 through 9, about, you know, the...
• 5:23
  about Shema, about, you know, talk about these things when you sit down, when you get up, when you lie down, when you go to, you know, walk along the way. Like, we wanted this just to be, you know, constantly spoken about and actually physically walked out.
• 5:39
  And so I think that's really what excited us about these biblical holidays is it was something that was really tangible, something that we could do together. It was a way to have a lot of fun. And it was a way that just kind of shaped the culture of our annual rhythms of like, hey, we're going to celebrate these seven biblical holidays. And so, yeah, it's like the perfect blend of having fun, but also really having a lot of value and creating this identity within the Khrutov household.
• 6:06
  of we're people who celebrate the biblical holidays, not because we have to, but because it's just a lot of fun. And it teaches us, reminds us of, you know, really important lessons. Yeah. We're kind of holiday people. I feel like before we even heard anything about biblical holidays, we're just the type that are like, this is fun. Like, this suits our personalities. We want to.
• 6:27
  think that holidays are incredibly identity forming within a family team. So it's like if we can go big on holidays that God created that are reminders and set points in the year that are going to root us in the story that like is actually where we want our family to be about. I think it was an easy like, yeah, we're all in. This is so up our alley. Awesome.
• 6:49
  Yeah. And I'd love to kind of drill into where you guys kind of got started with Sukkot. One of the things that sometimes when people see this holiday, they're like, oh, my gosh, seven days. Some people say eight days and whatever long it is, it's it's a it's an intense holiday. We were constantly trying to figure out what's the kind of easy step right into this whole thing. So, yeah, why don't you guys share anything that you've learned about how to get this thing going as a first step? How did it kind of start for you guys and then maybe evolve from there?
• 7:18
  Yeah, we started back in 2015. And the first year we just did two biblical holidays. We started with Passover and Sukkot. And yeah, so I recommend everyone start just really small, maybe pick a spring and a fall and just kind of see how it goes.
• 7:34
  Um, and, uh, both, yeah, it was, it was a lot of fun. Passover was a great experience and, uh, really kind of added an extra layer to the Easter story is what, what that really, what we really, you know, found a lot of benefit in that. And then Sukkot was just like, it was just perfect. I mean, it was like one of those things where it's like, you spend a week outside and like the perfect time of year to be doing this for the weather's beautiful and, um,
• 7:56
  You have a bunch of fun drinks and people over and you're just like, why do we not do this more often? You know, it's so it was like it was such an obvious when that one was. So it was it did become and still is our kids favorite holiday holiday.
• 8:12
  And yeah, we typically do seven days for the Sukkot. Sometimes it's been our daughter, our youngest daughter was born like right in the middle of Sukkot one year. So we had to kind of push it back and do a little bit shorter one. But yeah, again, we kind of make the most of it and just kind of allow it to build us up every month.
• 8:34
  I would say like for people who are interested in doing Sukhova, maybe you're overwhelmed with the idea that some ways to ease yourself into it or to hit the easy button on it. Our family actually doesn't build our own Sukho, which I think can feel overwhelming to people who are like, I don't know how to do that. That's not in my wheelhouse to like build a structure. We convert either our front porch or back porch into it. We decorate it. But that felt a little bit less overwhelming to me. And then...
• 9:03
  Um, we definitely, like Bryn said, we do seven days, but kind of like we do five days at our house. And then my aunt hosts like a big fall extended gathering every October. And usually our Sukkot like butts right up against that. So it is kind of seven days of like being outside. But we do it mostly at home just Monday through Friday. And
• 9:23
  Keep it very low key. So like the days you don't have to have a ton planned, you're basically going about your normal daily activities, but just doing as much outside as possible. And then in the evenings, we try to invite a family or multiple families over to have dinner with us and to play outside games. But it doesn't feel like you need a ton of planned activities. And I think that helps it feel like it's everyday life, but it's removed from the inside of your household, which sets it apart.
• 9:51
  And then, you know, all the additional traditions of fun food and playing more games and that kind of thing, just making it feel like a holiday. But like, oh, my gosh, how am I going to coordinate all this and have every moment scheduled and that kind of thing for seven days? Yeah.
• 10:08
  One of the things that, as you mentioned, Katie, you use this word sukkah. And that's, so if you're like, where is this in the Bible? Most Bibles translate Sukkot, the festival of tabernacles, or sometimes the festival of booths.
• 10:23
  Because what it's saying, the Hebrew word is Sukkot. The word for tabernacle or for booth in that context is the word sukkah. Sukkot just means like plural sukkahs basically is what that word means. And so it's the festival where everybody builds a booth outside and, you know, it has a deep symbolism.
• 10:42
  And so it's one of the ways that you have to kind of wrestle through how to hit the easy button. Like Katie just mentioned is like, okay, you might want to just decorate a part of the porch or your back deck or do something to make the suka building part of it less intimidating. Because oftentimes that is a difficult piece for some people. If you've got a construction background, that could be a lot of fun. You're like, oh, yeah, I could whip one of these things up, you know, go to Lowe's and, you know, there's plans online. You can use PVC, you can use wood, whatever. Yeah.
• 11:08
  We've built, I don't know how many different versions of a sukkah. They usually last four or five years before we have to start rebuilding most of them. So, yeah, that's kind of the essence of how to get this thing started. You have to have some place outside that is this booth, this place from which you are saying, we want God to come dwell with us in the sukkah. And so, yeah, I'd love for you guys to maybe tease out a little bit more about the meaning behind sukkah.
• 11:37
  How have you guys taught that to your kids? What does this holiday really represent in terms of identity or a teaching? What does it teach us?
• 11:46
  Yeah, sure. So like you mentioned, the spring holidays, Jesus's death, his burial, his resurrection, and then the Holy Spirit and giving the Holy Spirit at Pentecost. And then to kind of look at the fall, the continuation of the story, the fulfillment of the fall holidays is, you know, first is Yom Teru or Feast of Trumpets, where that basically represents like Jesus's return when the trump...
• 12:08
  you know, blasts and he returns. And then is Yom Kippur. And Yom Kippur for us, like, what that means is it represents, like, basically the cleansing of the earth in preparation for the ultimate holiday, Sukkot. And that's, like, what this is. Like, all these other things have been kind of the means to the end to get us to Sukkot, which is, like, when we get to dwell with God forever. And so that's what Sukkot means to us is, like, this remembrance of, like, hey, you know,
• 12:35
  all throughout the year, we are working on, you know, we have different projects, we have work, we're maintaining things and cleaning things. But like, this is a reminder. And we just take a week in the middle of the year, then we just say, hey, this is all temporary. Like all of this stuff that we've been working on is temporary. And we get to one day dwell with God for all of eternity. And that needs to be our primary focus. Like that needs to be in constantly repeated because
• 13:02
  man, we've got short memories, right? And so like, even though we know that, like constantly things will come up, whether it's at work or, you know, other issues that come up and we just think like, that is where our eyes are fixed. But like, this is such a powerful reminder to think through, like, this earth is not our home. We're living like exiles in this temporary place and we have our eyes fixed on a home yet to come.
• 13:25
  Yeah, I like that because, I mean, that's why we're outside of our home is the idea is you're able to like actually turn around and be like, that house is not our home. And it's like a real physical reminder of a very like intangible kind of truth. But another thing, in addition to like reminding ourselves like, okay, why are we spending so much time and effort and focus and worry on this small little piece of eternity, um,
• 13:51
  we should be living completely different if we have a really deep belief in like the forever forever eternity but i also really love sukot because one it's a super fun holiday with tons of celebration and special food special drink and it's such a good reminder that like we have a god who loves when we're enjoying being with them when we are enjoying ourselves like
• 14:16
  in a world that tells us, like, we serve a God that's just a bunch of thou shalt nots, and like, he doesn't want you to have fun with drinking or drugs or premarital sex or all these things he does, like, that the world calls fun. It's like, no, our God is the creator of fun. Like, he has, he's not just about a bunch of rules. He's about the very best things, and that's the God we serve. And the one I want to be teaching my kids about is, like, he is a God who loves fun, who loves all the good stuff, and
• 14:45
  has a whole eternity planned with only that good stuff. So we look at Sukkot also as another opportunity to really get our excitement up about eternity, which can feel kind of scary and unknown. But if we're like, this really incredible week is just a taste of like what's to come. So if you think this week is a fun, imagine this time's a million. And that's what we have to be looking forward to. So I feel like it's also painting this like...
• 15:10
  Let's be excited about this eternity, not just being like, oh, we should be living a certain way now because we want to have this eternity, but more like we should be looking forward to that eternity because this world is really broken. But eternity is not going to be. And all the good things we experienced this week are just like a little glimpse of it.
• 15:29
  Yeah, I remember as a kid, I was taught that we should look forward to heaven. But really, I didn't really have a context for what heaven looked like. And so it's like, to be honest, it wasn't something that I really put my hope in or wanted to happen. But yeah, hopefully this is a way that we can get our kids excited for what that forever kingdom looks like. We talk a lot about the Deuteronomy 14 tithe, which talks about how you can go and
• 15:56
  And basically take a chunk of money from the year and spend it on yourself, spend it on food that you enjoy and on strong drink and go and like experience that abundance that Katie was talking about. And how we tie that into this, like, this is what we have a good God that we can trust. And we know there's a lot of things we don't know about heaven, but we know the creator of heaven is a good, abundant, loving God.
• 16:18
  Yeah, man. Yeah, so good. Yeah, this theme, I think, is so incredibly relevant today, right? Like, this is what really got me. When I first saw this when I was a student in Jerusalem, and I went out of my dorm room and suddenly saw these sukkahs everywhere, and I was like, wow.
• 16:35
  Wow. Like a holiday where you're really helping your kids not put their hope in material, like present reality. Like this is the essence of what it's like. One of the biggest temptations we have in the West is like we have it good. We're relatively safe. We're relatively prosperous.
• 16:52
  And in the promised land, God said, well, I need to help you, disciple you out of this sort of problem of being so fixated on current stability that you lose your trust in me. So, yeah, I love this theme of walking by faith. And one of the things, if you guys want to get this one-page download at familyteams.com slash Sukkot, you can get this.
• 17:19
  kind of little catechism that we do every night at Sukkot. So I ask my kids a bunch of questions. You know, like Katie mentioned, this is a really, like, hospitable holiday. There's a lot of people we like to invite over, and we want them to experience Sukkot with us and to enter into this joy. And so, but it's weird for people because they're like, what is this? This is, you know, it's not, you know, we know what Christmas is. We know Thanksgiving.
• 17:42
  And so they need a little primer. And so this is the way we do this. So I start by asking, what is Sukkot? And then one of my kids will say, the Festival of Tabernacles. How do you celebrate Sukkot? We dwell or live in a sukkah for seven days. What is a sukkah? A temporary dwelling. Why is it temporary? Because we are sojourners on the earth. What is a sojourner? Someone traveling to a distant land. Why are we traveling? Because we're still not home. Right.
• 18:11
  Where is our home? The new Jerusalem. And how do we get from Fort Thomas, Kentucky to the new Jerusalem? And the answer is by faith. And so that's the kind of way that we introduce Sukkot every night. So again, if you want to grab that one pager, familyteams.com slash Sukkot. I just fold this one page up and have it in my pocket for a whole week during Sukkot so I can pull it out.
• 18:34
  And like, okay, guys, you know, it makes it really easy as a dad just to like enter in and you can kind of tease out these different themes a little bit deeper if you want. But this little back and forth question and answer thing really, I think, encapsulates the larger kind of meaning of Sukkot. So, yeah, I would love for you guys to get a hold of that if you're...
• 18:53
  Even if you're just starting this. And I think one of the things that we really recommend is that, you know, you might have to start relatively small and kind of not bite off more than you can chew in sort of a first go at this. So, yeah. As you guys are thinking about, like, other things that a family who's hearing this...
• 19:12
  is potentially trying to wrestle through how do we get this started? Any other elements that you guys want to share about what makes this either meaningful for you or might be helpful for a family who's just starting to celebrate Sukkot?
• 19:26
  Yeah, well, one of the things, I mean, I love that script that you just read. I think that's really cool. One of the things, like as we do most of the other biblical holidays, we kind of, you know, like Passover has its Haggadah, right? Where it's like this long, like, script. And we kind of created longer scripts for each of the other holidays, except for Sukkot. Sukkot is one where it's just like this, it's more about the repetition, repetition of like this earth is not our home that we say before dinner each night. And we almost...
• 19:54
  I mean, I think we have somebody over for dinner every single night of Sukkot. Which you could also, on the flip side, have it be just your family and then do one night where it's like you invite multiple families over. So depending on how much fun that is for you to host. Yeah, but it's just this opportunity to repeat this over and over, like dwelling in this short little thing that just needs to be like dwelt in all week. And so I think that in a way, in terms of like preparation, it's actually probably the one that has the least preparation.
• 20:23
  And then... So gathering supplies, not really. I mean, it's not like... Right. Well, unless you're going to build a big sukkah, then maybe it would save a little while. We just put bistro lights on our back porch, and so that's how we've done it. I really think that you can get creative with the...
• 20:42
  The elements that make it like this is this whenever I hear this song or whenever we read this book or this food, it just drives me to Sukkot. So like for breakfast. To Sukkot is driving you to I'm on eternity. You know, like they're linked that way. Right. So like for us, Toaster Strudels. Toaster Strudels is the breakfast we have. Don't eat it any other time here. Yeah.
• 21:04
  That's our Sukkot breakfast. We go outside and we eat toaster. The toaster is a really easy kitchen appliance to take outside. So that's where we do it. We've got the toaster outside. We make our breakfast. So toaster strudels, there's certain songs that we play during Sukkot. Or there's The Velveteen Rabbit, which is a book that we read during Sukkot. And there's just certain things that...
• 21:27
  create these memories and traditions. So I would, yeah, I would encourage families to get creative with it. But at the same time, you know, yeah, like you said, start small. If you can't handle hosting, you know, initially can't handle hosting somebody every night of the week and just want to do like, you know, one night with maybe a couple of families, like you absolutely have total freedom to to allow this to develop as you go and see what works best for your family. Awesome.
• 21:55
  I agree with that repetition idea, especially like maybe instead of having a script, our family is more about the catchphrases that we'd be quick to say just throughout the week. Or it's like, this is a taste of the kingdom. Like whenever it's like, look at all this yard full of friends having a great time together. This is a taste of the kingdom. These toaster strudels, they're a taste of the kingdom. It's like this idea of hospitality and we're all like one church together. Yeah.
• 22:20
  a taste of the kingdoms one um this earth is not our home we're looking forward to a home yet to come and i feel like those are just kind of things that we're saying throughout the week to like place like this is why we're doing this and this is what we're setting our husband yeah and and one of the traditions that we have i love to look at these biblical holidays and be like well what what makes christmas so special what what is it that people love about christmas and let's really break it down so one of them is decorations that you're like
• 22:46
  Our family has these decorations we get out every year. So our decorations for Sukkot are we have cardboard boxes that we cut up into small little shapes. And when friends come over or for our kids, they color a picture and we hang it with string from like our back porch. So the cardboard boxes represent our homelessness. Like you see a homeless person on the street holding a card box. So it's like this is not our home. We're homeless while we're on Earth waiting for our forever home.
• 23:14
  But it's like those are the decorations that a couple of them we've saved since our very first Sukkot and we pulled those out. Mostly we're creating new ones. So we had these like the old, old ones that have been passed down from year to year. And you had certain, like Brent said, songs that it's like we're listening to or certain foods that we eat this time of year. Certain games or traditions like we always do our pumpkin carving during Sukkot because, hey, we're doing it during the fall anyway. So why not make it part of this holiday?
• 23:44
  fun things traditions to look forward to so i feel like you can borrow other seasonal things that it's like oh apple cider is not year long but what if it became our succot drink you know and like you kind of just borrow of the seasonality and the specialness that fall already has and be like but we're gonna now directly associate that thing with succot yeah
• 24:05
  Yes. Oh man. I love that. Yeah. We, we need a good harvest, like holiday, you know, like that's, there's something so amazing about being outside in the fall. Um, and yeah, this, this one really, really fits the bill, by the way. Um, the dates for 2025 Sukkot, uh, is October 6th through October 13th. Those are sort of official dates. You certainly can celebrate it whenever you want, but that's, um, they, the, uh,
• 24:32
  The biblical holidays follow a lunar calendar, and so they can move two or three weeks, depending on the year. So sometimes it's a little bit later in October, sometimes it's late in September. So that's the dates for this year. Yom Tura is September 22nd to the 24th. Yom Kippur is October 1st and 2nd. Sukkot is, like I said, October 6th to the 13th.
• 24:53
  So yeah, if you guys are interested in diving into Sukkot, we've got this podcast. April and I will be on next week talking about kind of doing a deep dive on our sort of festival traditions as well. And then Brent and Katie are going to be in the Accelerator during the second week of September. So we'll give you guys a whole playbook. We have like this amazing Sukkot starter kit that you guys get this month if you're in the Accelerator. So we'd love to give you that. The second week, the Kruhtoffs will be on a Zoom call. So if you guys have questions about how they do
• 25:21
  Any of these fall holidays, you can ask them then, especially about Sukkot. And then we're just going to help you guys get something started. I think this is going to be so meaningful for you guys. And then we're going to give you guys a little tutorial video in the Accelerator on the third week. And the fourth week, we'll do a town hall with our family. And also, we can drill into Sukkot or any other topics you guys want to talk about at the end of September.
• 25:44
  That's what's coming. And so if you want to get in the Accelerator, go to familyteams.com. Just click on that. Again, if you want to grab this like one pager, you can go to familyteams.com slash Sukkot and get the one pager for free. We'd love for you guys to get a hold of that. We'd love for you guys to be part of the Accelerator this month if you guys are able to join us. So Brent and Katie, thank you guys so much for jumping on the podcast. And thanks for being community coaches once again for us. Yeah, this is a topic we love. So we're very excited to be part of it.
• 26:11
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