• indoubt Podcast
  • ·
  • December 19, 2022

Ep. 206: How to Love Christmas

With Alexandra Kuykendall, , , and Isaac Dagneau

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For most of us, the Christmas season brings about stress, comparison, and, generally, a lack of time and/or money. But is that how we should be approaching it? Should we really be experiencing Christmas this way? On this week’s episode of indoubt, Alexandra Kuykendall joins us to discuss what it means to love Christmas in the context of our actual lives. So often we immediately expect to be stressed out during the holidays because that what we’ve learned to expect. But Isaac and Alexandra encourage us to step outside of our expectations and learn to love our Christmas season, no matter what moment of life we’re in.

View Transcription

Kourtney Cromwell:
Welcome to the indoubt Podcast, where we explore the challenging topics that young adults often face. Each week, we talked with guests who help answer questions of faith, life, and culture, connecting them to our daily experiences and God’s Word. For more info on indoubt, visit indoubt.ca or indoubt.com.

Kourtney Cromwell:
Merry Christmas, everyone! This is Kourtney and it’s so good to have you with us for this episode. Because we’re in the Christmas season and to kind of tie in with last week’s episode with Ross Breitkreuz, this week we’re joined by Alexandra Kuykendall to discuss how we can love our lives as they are during this holiday season. Christmas can often bring added stress on our finances, relationships, and schedules, and Isaac and Alexandra discuss how we can shift our focus to the good news of what Christmas actually is. So, I hope that you’re encouraged by this episode with Isaac and Alexandra Kuykendall.

Isaac Dagneau:
Hey, this is Isaac from indoubt. With me today on the show is author, speaker, podcaster, Alexandra Kuykendall. It’s great to have you with us today, Alexandra.

Alexandra Kuykendall:
Oh, thanks for having me.

Isaac Dagneau:
As we do with many of our guests, actually all of them, we just want to know a little bit about who you are, because, for myself, and for many of our listeners, we don’t know you. So yeah, share a little about who you are and also how you came to know Jesus.

Alexandra Kuykendall:
Well, I currently live in Denver, Colorado in the United States. I am an author, as you said, and I host a podcast with my friend Krista Gilbert. I have four daughters that range in age from 8 to 17. And I am married to my husband Derek, we’ve been married for over 21 years, and he runs a ministry here in Denver to people that are coming out of homelessness, mostly from addictions and domestic violence. So, our life is very much a city kind of life, and we try to love our neighbours the best we can and are very involved in our kids’ activities. And right now, is basketball season, which means we have four basketball teams that we are juggling. So, this week I have five basketball games I am going to. Yeah, that just gives you a snapshot of my life.
I came to faith in high school through the ministry Young Life, which is an outreach ministry to mostly high school students; they have some college groups too. And I was the only child of a single mother and had never heard the gospel before, and was invited to Young Life Club, which is a little bit like youth group for non-churched kids. Where they play games, and they have a little talk, and leaders spend time with young people. And Young Life is also known for its summer camps. And so, I went to camp and then I worked at a camp later in high school, and it was a very transformative experience for me, because this was all news to me. It was all good news.
And it sent me on a trajectory that I am so grateful for, that… I started asking questions of faith as a teenager, because I think it protected me from a lot of potentially painful decisions that were probably in my future if I were a young adult living and kind of trying to make my way without the pillars of faith and the guideposts of life as guided by the Holy Spirit. So that was a long time ago and I’ve lived a lot of life in between then, and I’m very grateful for God making himself evident to me when I was just 15.

Isaac Dagneau:
That’s awesome. Thanks, Alexandra, for sharing that. And how did you… Or I guess I should ask, when did the desire and the calling to write, and to speak, and blog and all these different things, when did that kind of start and how did that form?

Alexandra Kuykendall:
Yeah, well, it’s still a surprise to me. This was not what I was intending to do. I had worked in community relations, public relations before I had kids. Then my husband and I moved from Portland, Oregon to Denver when I was pregnant with our oldest daughter and I decided not to go back to work. I was going to be home with her and with our future children, and I got very involved with the local MOPS group, which is a ministry to moms. It stands for Mothers of Preschoolers. And I was very impacted by the ministry. It’s a little bit like Young Life for moms, so you can see that my passion and my tendency tends to be relationships and presenting the gospel to the unbeliever, and doing it through this incarnational approach of relationships, because that’s what MOPS does for moms. So, I had this very impactful experience.
Well, it turns out MOPS is headquartered internationally here in Denver, and I felt God’s very strong call to go work at the office. And it was through my work there – I was the on staff for almost 10 years, between contracts and different staffing positions I had there – through my position, I was offered the opportunity to write a book. And I had been doing a lot of speaking on behalf of the organization and I’d been doing quite a bit of writing, but it was very mom-based article kind of writing. So, when I was offered the chance to write my first book, when I was on staff, I knew that it was an opportunity that doesn’t normally just get handed to somebody. And God was very gracious, and I wrote my first book while I was on staff there. And then decided I really like this format, I like being able to dive into a topic a little deeper, reveal a little bit more of myself, get to know the reader, let the reader get to know me through my stories on a given topic; and I’ve written three more books since then.

Isaac Dagneau:
That’s awesome. That’s so good. Well, thank you for sharing that and kind of flowing out of that, it’s good, because you have written a book called, Loving My Actual Christmas, which, when I was digging into it a little bit more, I noticed that you had two other books with similar titles. So obviously that’s your kind of thing, at least for this series. Now before we get into that book, maybe we could just begin this conversation, since this is about Loving My Actual Christmas, I think it would just be good for all of us, and our listeners, just to remind ourselves, what is Christmas? So, before we jump into this idea of Loving My Actual Christmas, what is Christmas all about? how would you, Alexandra, describe the meaning of Christmas?

Alexandra Kuykendall:
Well, there are certainly lots of people with lots of opinions about what Christmas is about. Walmart has opinions about what it’s about. Hallmark has opinions. But we, as the church, celebrate Christmas because it is our annual reminder that God loved us so much that He entered humanity, that He disrupted the trajectory of where we were going as people, by entering this earth as a baby, being fully human and fully divine. And when you think about all of the stories in the Bible, we don’t celebrate them all every year. There are only a few that, as the church, we celebrate annually. And culturally, there’s really only one that we celebrate, and that’s Christmas.
So, a lot of people celebrate Christmas without celebrating the birth of Christ, but I think it’s because it’s this overflow, that it was such a momentous moment in human history, that even those who do not believe in the divinity of Christ still recognize its importance in some way. And of course, it’s become commercialized, and lots of people tell us what we should want and what we should do over the Christmas season, and we’ll talk about that. But for us who follow Christ, we remember this is the good news that God came.

Isaac Dagneau:
Yeah, and that’s so good. And we need that reminder, obviously, all throughout the year, but it is exceptionally good to have that one time where the church altogether remembers corporately. So back to your book, Alexandra, I guess a good question to begin, just diving into some of the things that you found in researching for your book and living this out, what did you find, in your life? What was the problem or the issues that you were encountering around the Christmas season that made you think and then want to find solutions for, which led to finally writing this book, Loving My Actual Christmas? What were some of those problems and issues?

Alexandra Kuykendall:
Well, I think there’s kind of two levels where people feel stress. The maybe more superficial levels of stress that we feel over the holiday season, which have to do often with time and with money. So, if we are feeling really stressed as busy people all year long, Christmas is going to feel even more chaotic because we have all of the extras, we have all the parties and the concerts, and the events, and things at church. And then if money feels tight all year round, it’s obviously going to feel especially tight at Christmas, because there’s all of these things to spend money on. So, you mentioned I wrote a few other books in this Loving My Actual series. The first one is titled Loving My Actual Life, and it’s about contentment. And really it’s geared towards moms of young kids, because that was where my audience started when I was at MOPS.
And as I was going around the country talking to moms about Loving My Actual Life, I would often hear this general sentiment of, “Well, I can live my life most of the year, but we all know that the Christmas season is stressful.” And it was just this understanding that seemed very accepted culturally, that we were all going to be stressed over the holidays. And I knew in my spirit that there was something wrong with that. But if we are celebrating the good news of Christ’s arrival, that it shouldn’t be a time of additional stress and we just shouldn’t all agree that we really can’t handle the season well. So, there’s that. And then the deeper angst that I was hearing from people, as I talked to their stress around Christmas time, was really the grief and pain around life in general. That if relationships were hard, they felt especially hard during the holidays. So, if there was an empty seat at the table, either because of a broken relationship or because somebody had died, or divorce, or military service, whatever reason, it felt especially empty during the Christmas season.
And the other thing is Christmas is an annual marker. We talked about how every year we celebrate this holiday because it is good news. But because it is an annual marker, we can quickly remember where we were a year ago, maybe 10 years ago, on Christmas. And because we can go back to that place so quickly, we can also go back to the expectations and the hopes that we had a year ago. And we’ve lived a year of life since then, and maybe life has not gone the way that we thought it would. Maybe some dreams we had haven’t been fulfilled and we’re disappointed that we’re still in the same place. Maybe life has gotten much more difficult, there’s been a medical diagnosis, or a breakup, or a job loss, and we weren’t expecting that. And so, it acts as this reminder that life doesn’t always work out the way that we thought it would. And so, we contrast that with the Hallmark Channel, with the Christmas commercials, with the car with the bow on top, and we’re holding this additional pain and grief that feels acute over the holiday season. And we’re contrasting it with the messages culturally of happiness and consumerism that we are being handed. And the two don’t go together and we can feel that disconnect.
And so when we’re working to love our actual Christmas, we’re looking at our real circumstances and we’re saying, “Okay God, if this is good news that you came, for all of humanity, for all of time, then that has to mean that it’s good news for my life today. But if my life today feels a little bit off, for whatever reason,” and I mean, people have real pain that they bring into the holidays. Addictions can be more intense during the holiday season; conflict can get more heated. We often are around people that we are able to avoid all year long during the holiday season and sometimes that’s for good reason, because things aren’t healthy. So, for feeling that disconnect and we’re looking for God in that, we have to realize and see how God is making Himself evident to us today, within our actual lives, during this season of Advent and then of Christmas celebration.

Isaac Dagneau:
Yeah. That’s so good. Alexandra, thank you for that. And so I think what you’re hoping, and you can correct me here or elaborate on it, what you’re hoping to do through your book, and I mean, through this conversation too, is just to kind of remind people that don’t measure your situation of Christmas with the Hallmark Channel, or even the picture perfect church family Christmas. Understand where God has placed you in life right now, and learn and discipline yourself to enjoy Christmas even in the circumstance that you’re in. Would you say that’s kind of what you’re getting at? Or, maybe elaborate on that a bit more.

Alexandra Kuykendall:
Yes. And if we think about it, Christmas is the story of God entering humanity and humanity’s history. The truth is it’s also the story of God entering into very individual lives and stories. If we think of the original cast of characters, as I call them, the original people that encountered Jesus at His birth, they were people that were walking all kinds of different life roads and they weren’t necessarily asking for their lives to be interrupted in this way. I am sure that Joseph did not think it was such a great plan that God made Mary pregnant in a way that was so public and shaming to him. And Mary, I’m sure, did not think that this was the best plan either. Here she was, probably younger than my oldest daughter, away from home, delivering a baby in a strange place that doesn’t sound like it was very comfortable. Things were not as she thought they should be.
And then the angels appeared to the shepherds. They were just a bunch of working dudes doing the night shift, and all of the sudden their lives got interrupted. Now, with good news, and they recognized that it was good news, but it wasn’t the plan that they had going into that week, or month, or evening. And so, as we look at our lives and we often naturally compare it to the exterior circumstances that we see in other people’s lives, because sometimes when I think we’re comparing circumstances, we don’t really see other people’s full pictures, so we’re not even comparing our reality to their reality, we’re comparing our reality to their public selves. When we do that, we need to remember that God came and interrupted individual stories for good, but that doesn’t mean that it was comfortable, and it doesn’t mean that it was even welcomed in the moment.
And so I think that helps us remember that Hallmark may say that Christmas is supposed to have this happy clappy nice little story ending to it, that always seems to wrap up right on December 24th, but that’s not how actual life works. And Jesus came for our actual lives. He came for our gritty, He came for our pain and our grief. And if we’re feeling those things over the holiday season, you’re that much closer to the heartbeat of Christmas. Jesus didn’t have to come because life was perfect, and life felt good. He came because of our sin and He came because of the hard parts of life. And so, when we look at it that way, being in a difficult place is almost closer to the heartbeat of Christmas than being in an easy place. Does that make sense?

Isaac Dagneau:
It does. And as you say that, it’s clicking, because you brought up the story of Joseph and Mary and the predicaments that they were in, even before Jesus was born. And then when Jesus was born, I mean, it wasn’t all easy after that, even though the gift of Jesus was good news. I mean, then Herod was after them, they had to flee down to Egypt, and then they’d go here and there, and there was still lots going on. So, I think that that fits nicely into what you are saying, in the sense that Christmas ought to be this interruption of good news in our lives. That doesn’t mean everything’s going to be cleaned up at His coming, but it means now that we have this fresh reminder of faith, a fresh reminder of who God is and His great love for us, that will help us walk through the trials that we are already engaged in.

Alexandra Kuykendall:
Yes.

Isaac Dagneau:
Yeah.

Alexandra Kuykendall:
Yep.

Isaac Dagneau:
Culture can put a lot of pressure on us, right? To make the most of each holiday. And we’ve talked about Hallmark and different things like that, and I mean, we just scroll through Instagram, and you made a good point saying that we measure our reality to other people’s picture. So, we have this pressure here kind of from culture. From your perspective, in your experience, a question is, how can us listening be less impacted by culture during Christmas?

Alexandra Kuykendall:
I would say know what your stressors are. So, we tend to have three big stressors over the holiday season: money, time, and extended family relationships. So, of those three, what tends to stress you out the most, and then be proactive to set yourself up for success. So, for me, money is often a stress. We’re a ministry family, we don’t have a lot of extra money and we have four children, and I want to give them what they’re hoping for, for Christmas, as far as physical gifts. So, I already know just going into the holiday, I’m going to be stressed about money. So, what can I do proactively to set myself up and set my kids up for success? For me, I don’t go to the mall if I can avoid it. So, I do my shopping online. It allows me to go and get exactly what I’m hoping for and have it delivered here, which helps with time, which is another one of my stressors.
I try to limit my kids’ consumption. It’s harder the older that they get, especially when your kids are little, of marketing. Marketers know that kids are watching TV and they know that they can put on that commercial, just like there’s the adult commercial with the car with the bow on top, there’s the kid commercial with the toy that is perfectly timed during the holiday season. So, I try to limit… That. My husband and I try to set a budget and stick to it. So, I’d say this year, even, we haven’t done a great job of saying this is our bottom-line number, but that’s what I always tell people to do. If you share money with someone or if you just manage your own money, choose a bottom-line number that you’re going to be happy with, so in January, when your credit card bill arrives, you are not regretting Christmas and how you spent money. So those are some practical things as far as money goes.
Time, I would say, if you know that you’re going to be over-scheduled, start saying no to some of the regular things in your life. So, if you have some regular meetings or you’re part of some groups that meet on a regular basis, just opt out of those between now and New Year’s. Be mindful of taking care of your physical self. When we’re crunched on time, we often start skipping exercise, we start eating poorly, we don’t get enough sleep. Then we become more stressed physically, which makes sleeping more difficult. So, just being mindful of how you’re taking care of your body if time is going to be a crunch, and you will set yourself up for success a little more.
And then relationships are a little bit trickier, about knowing what to say yes to and what to say no to. And I would say have some allies in your life, some safe people, that if you know you are going to be meeting up with people that are difficult for you over the holiday season, how can you set yourself up for success? So, things like… You know you’re not going to bring up certain subjects in the conversation, or you have someone in the room who is going to be making sure that things don’t escalate, and when they do, they give you that look across the room or they interject that sentence that lets you know you’re getting a little too heated, so you can control your own behaviours. And so, I think there’s just lots of little practical things that we can do, ahead of time, when we know that certain stressors are going to be difficult for us.

Isaac Dagneau:
That’s such good practical advice, Alexandra, to have those just proactive things in your mindset. And having someone, like you said, an ally, someone that is kind of with you on that so you’re not going in solo, because we can quickly change rules if we’re the rule maker, but if there’s two of us together making the rules, then it’s a little bit harder to change the rules, because you have that accountability. Alexandra, from writing your book, maybe you could share with us, as we begin to wrap up, just a few takeaways. I know you’ve already suggested lots of practical things, and that’s so good and that’s great. I’m hoping that many listeners and myself will be able to use that. But maybe there’s just a few ways, or one or two, from your book, kind of takeaways that will help us just really engage in and appreciate this Christmas season in whatever predicament we’ve found ourselves in life.

Alexandra Kuykendall:
Mm-hmm (affirmative). It’s always helpful to reflect on the miracle. It really is a miracle that we celebrate that God came as a baby for us. And in the stress, and the overeating, and the overspending, and the overrunning around, we can forget that this is what we celebrate. So, this morning, I am stressed. I woke up at 4:30. I scrolled on my phone for a little bit, not a healthy behaviour, and I said, “This is not what’s going to help me through today.” So, I kind of had to have that internal conversation. I got up, I turned on my Christmas tree, I sat by the tree, I opened my Bible, had my cup of coffee, and it took me maybe 10 or 15 minutes of quiet to remember this is the miracle and it reset my whole day. Now, maybe morning isn’t your time to do that. But I tell people, and I truly believe this, that if you spend five minutes a day pondering the miracle, you will be better for it.
In Luke chapter two, in the NIV version, when it’s talking about Mary holding baby Jesus and taking in all of the things that she had seen, it uses the word pondering; that she was pondering what was happening around her. I think for people who live in doubt about whether this story is true, that word gives us permission to have questions, to not understand at all, to maybe have questions about how it intersects with our actual lives and the pain and the grief we’re experiencing. If God so loved the world, then why am I feeling so much pain right now? Well, God gives us permission to ponder, which means to sit in it. Not necessarily have answers. Maybe you have a lot of questions. But to sit in this story and consider, “Okay, what if it is true? What does that mean for my life? How does it change how I see the reality that I’m living today? What does it mean for 2020 if this is even possibly partway true?” And so, I think if we spend five minutes a day just sitting in that.
And so that could be like what I did this morning, turning on the Christmas tree and having some quiet. It could mean turning on a very beautiful Christmas carol and listening to the words. It could mean reading from Luke chapter two, which is where I point people all the time, just sit in that chapter, all month long, and you will have a different lens. It may not be radically, but it will be at least slightly different as you face the stressors that your actual life brings you.

Isaac Dagneau:
Yeah, that’s so good. And I think you answered my last question, which was how can we centre our focus on Jesus better this season? Well, that’s a great practical way to do that. You said spend five minutes pondering, thinking about Jesus, and you pointed people to Luke two, and that’s so good. So, I think that answers that perfectly. So, Alexandra, I just want to thank you so much for taking the time to be with us today.

Alexandra Kuykendall:
Oh, thank you for having me. And Merry Christmas.

Kourtney Cromwell:
This episode serves as such a good reminder for all of us, so I’m really thankful that Alexandra was able to join us and share how we can set our eyes on a more Christ-centred Christmas this year, being careful of the distractions that are around us.
If you’d like to find out more information about Alexandra and her book, Loving My Actual Christmas, you can go to her website at www.alexandrakuykendall.com. And for anything else that we mentioned, we’ll have that on the episode page online. So, I hope that you all have a Merry Christmas and that you join us again next week as Joshua, Isaac, and Daniel take a look back at what happened in 2019.

Kourtney Cromwell:
Thanks so much for listening. If you want to hear more, subscribe on iTunes and Spotify, or visit us online at indoubt.ca or indoubt.com. We’re also on social media, so make sure to follow us on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter.

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Ep_206_1920x1080

Who's Our Guest?

Alexandra Kuykendall

Alexandra Kuykendall, a trusted voice for Christian women, speaks on issues of how faith impacts everyday life. She is the Co-Founder of The Open Door Sisterhood, a community of women working to be world changers for good, right where they are. She co-hosts a podcast & retreat under the same name. Alex has authored four books: Loving My Actual Life, Loving My Actual Christmas, The Artist’s Daughter: A Memoir, & her newest Loving My Actual Neighbour. Alex lives in the shadows of downtown Denver with her husband Derek & their four daughters.
Ep_206_1920x1080

Who's Our Guest?

Alexandra Kuykendall

Alexandra Kuykendall, a trusted voice for Christian women, speaks on issues of how faith impacts everyday life. She is the Co-Founder of The Open Door Sisterhood, a community of women working to be world changers for good, right where they are. She co-hosts a podcast & retreat under the same name. Alex has authored four books: Loving My Actual Life, Loving My Actual Christmas, The Artist’s Daughter: A Memoir, & her newest Loving My Actual Neighbour. Alex lives in the shadows of downtown Denver with her husband Derek & their four daughters.