Hey there. I know. Christmas?! Now? It hit 97 degrees this weekend in Denver, a bit difficult to get into the Christmas spirit. And yet, we’ve switched that calendar day over and we are now officially past Labor Day. Which means we are on one fast slide toward Christmas.
What can I tell you about this new book that debuts today? Well it is titled Loving My Actual Christmas: An Experiment in Relishing the Season. Yes it sounds a lot like Loving My Actual Life. The books are similar in the experiment format and this one focuses in on that stress-inducing holiday. It is part practical, part inspirational as it offers some ideas on how to simplify, slow down, and remember why we do this crazy making in the first place.
This is a book for women. Because we tend to be the Christmas orchestrators. The ones who do the shopping, cooking, party planning, wrapping, memory making. We want this holiday to be special for those we love. And sometimes, just sometimes, when all of our special making is done we feel as though we’ve survived the holiday. We want more from this holy marker than to collapse on the 26th, we want to relish it, savor it, remember it as a beautiful celebration.
From expectations to hard conversations to budget management to limiting commitments, this book is intended to help the reader (you!) create space for her priorities. What do you want to remember a year from now? Ten years from now? Start from there and work backwards. Christmas can act as a marker. It can remind us how things have changed, or haven’t, since the holiday last year. This is often a difficult reminder that our actual lives are not always as we hope. This is when we celebrate anyway. When we dig deep into the holy remembrance that God so loved the world….he sent a baby.
So if all of this sounds like something you, or someone you know, could use, you can get the book today! You can find it lots of places, but the biggies are Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Walmart, and Target. A book designed with groups in mind, to read through together in preparation for the season, you can get bulk discounts through Direct2Church.com. (And find some tips for groups here.)
May the next few months be a time of anticipation (rather than a time of bracing yourself) for what this Christmas holds.