Relatable with Allie Beth Stuckey - Ep 724 ｜ Why My Family Celebrates Christmas but Not Santa

00:00:00.000 Is Christmas pagan? Should Christians tell kids that Santa Claus is real? We will be discussing

00:00:08.640 these things today. Also, at the very end, we will recap the circus that was yesterday's White

00:00:16.880 House ceremony for the signing of the so-called Respect for Marriage Act. We will respond to some

00:00:22.900 of the things that Joe Biden had to say. It is a full episode. You guys are going to love it. I just

00:00:30.580 have a really good feeling. This episode is brought to you by our friends at Good Ranchers.

00:00:35.360 So go to GoodRanchers.com. Use promo code Allie, GoodRanchers.com, code Allie, GoodRanchers.com,

00:00:42.440 code Allie.

00:00:52.900 All right, guys. So a Christmas episode that I've been wanting to do for a little bit,

00:00:58.100 but there's been so much going on in the news that I felt like I need to cover.

00:01:03.340 But we are finally getting to it. We're finally getting to the conversation of Christmas being

00:01:09.780 pagan or not, and also what I believe about Santa. So there is going to be a lot of gospel,

00:01:15.600 a lot of scripture woven into this episode that even if you don't agree with me, I hope will still

00:01:21.320 edify you because that, of course, is what the Word of God does. It informs, it encourages,

00:01:28.920 it equips, and it edifies. So if you listen to nothing else that I say, if you're compelled by

00:01:34.420 nothing else that I say on this episode, at least be encouraged by what scripture has to say.

00:01:41.660 Before we get into it, let me say a couple of things. So yesterday at the end of the podcast,

00:01:46.340 I said that Dallas Jenkins is going to be on the show tomorrow. I asked you for some questions that

00:01:50.820 you might have for him. It's actually going to be on Monday that the episode is going to come out.

00:01:57.780 And so you still got time. Send me some questions that you might have for him. You've already sent

00:02:03.000 me a few. The Dallas Jenkins, if you don't know, he is the creator of the series The Chosen. I have

00:02:08.760 lots of different questions for him. And so make sure that you listen to that. Tomorrow, I'm going to

00:02:14.580 have Lynn Wilder on the show. She wrote a book with her son called Unveiling Grace. She spent 30 years

00:02:21.920 in the Mormon church before she heard and believed the gospel. And so we are going to listen to her

00:02:30.340 testimony tomorrow. And I think that you are going to be so inspired by her courage. And you're probably

00:02:40.400 going to be in tears as I was at certain points, just reminded again of the goodness and the

00:02:48.520 relentlessness of God in his pursuit of those that he loves and has chosen. So make sure that you tune

00:02:57.640 into that. And then of course, Monday's episode with Dallas Jenkins as well. Also, you can still get

00:03:03.540 merch, Christmas merch or non-Christmas merch from the Blaze TV store. We've got a little friendly

00:03:08.900 merch war going on among the Blaze TV hosts. We are winning because we have amazing merch. What can I

00:03:15.760 say? So if you're watching on YouTube, you can see some of our Christmas merch there. Buy a Pitbull

00:03:23.000 sticker. Our Pitbull sticker needs some love. When my producer and I came up with that, we were like,

00:03:29.980 we might be the only people to buy this sticker. But a few of you, you like it. You get the inside joke.

00:03:36.920 It's a little pitbull with a cigar saying you better watch out. And then you guys are loving

00:03:42.160 our thrill of hope sweatshirt. Like absolutely loving it. And then raise a joyful ruckus. But

00:03:48.240 we've got all kinds of non-Christmas merch, t-shirts, hats, stickers, all that good stuff. And so go ahead

00:03:55.380 and make your order there. Use Allie20 for 20% off. We'll link the merch shop in the description of this

00:04:03.000 episode. So you can click on it and go on there and use the code for a discount. All right. I think

00:04:08.160 that's all the points of order that I have there. Let's go ahead and get into it. So I first want to

00:04:12.860 start with this question of whether or not Christmas is a pagan holiday. This is something that I've seen

00:04:20.400 increasingly over the past few years. I don't remember growing up this being a question. I mean,

00:04:27.260 I knew that Jehovah's Witnesses didn't celebrate Christmas. And if I remember correctly, also didn't

00:04:34.220 celebrate birthdays and things like that. But that's because they believe things that are not

00:04:39.900 based on scripture at all. And so I did not know that there were people who were Christians who

00:04:46.560 didn't celebrate Christmas because they deem it completely secular or completely pagan.

00:04:53.160 So I've been wanting to look into this because I don't want to just discount or dismiss an argument

00:04:59.880 simply because I'm not familiar with it or because it's different from how I grew up. And so I dug into

00:05:05.660 this. There are a few different good sources, resources on this. I found John Piper's take on this to be

00:05:15.380 really interesting, thorough and compelling as John Piper does. He cites scripture throughout his

00:05:21.880 response to this assertion that Christmas is just too pagan for Christians to celebrate. And he goes

00:05:28.180 through a lot of the arguments. And we won't go through every single argument that's made. I'll kind

00:05:33.180 of summarize it and then go to scripture as we look to find the answers to this. But I am going to use

00:05:40.160 on desiringgod.org, John Piper's article on this, which is actually, I believe, a transcript

00:05:47.060 of his podcast, Ask Pastor John, which is a podcast that I listen to from time to time. So he is

00:05:55.780 answering this question, is Christmas too pagan for Christians to celebrate? If you don't know anything

00:06:04.660 about the origins of Christmas, it is true that Christmas may coincide with some pagan celebrations

00:06:14.780 and so-called pagan holidays. There are parts of Christmas that we include now in our Christmas

00:06:23.720 celebrations that do not necessarily have a grounding in scripture or have a grounding necessarily in

00:06:32.020 church history. And the Gospel Coalition, Kevin DeYoung wrote an article for the Gospel Coalition. There

00:06:38.740 are a lot of things that the Gospel Coalition publishes that I do not agree with, but that doesn't mean,

00:06:43.740 of course, that we discount everything that is written there and every article that is written.

00:06:47.760 So Kevin DeYoung, he writes this interesting article really talking about the history of the church and

00:06:53.480 the history of Christmas specifically within the church. Something that he says is that after the

00:06:59.120 conversion of Constantine in the fourth century, Christians did sometimes adapt and Christianize

00:07:04.200 pagan festivals. Whether they did so wisely and effectively is open to historical debate,

00:07:09.700 but the motivation was to transform the paganism of the Roman world rather than to raise it to the

00:07:17.180 ground. Even if Christmas was plopped down on December 25th because of Saturnalia and Sol Invictus,

00:07:24.440 which were the pagan celebrations that a lot of people were saying was really kind of what we know now

00:07:30.520 was Christmas. He argues that that by itself does not entail that the Christian celebration of Christ's birth

00:07:37.000 really began as a pagan festival. He says that there is good evidence that December 25th was not chosen

00:07:45.740 because of any pagan winter holidays. He said, unlike Easter, which developed as a Christian holiday much

00:07:52.060 earlier, there is no mention of birth celebrations from the earliest church fathers. Christian writers

00:07:57.120 like Arrhenius and Tertullian say nothing about a festival in honor of Christ's birth or origin,

00:08:03.740 even mocks Roman celebrations of birth anniversaries as pagan practices. This is a pretty good indication,

00:08:09.780 he says, that Christmas was not yet on the ecclesiastical calendar and that if it were,

00:08:15.200 it would not have been tied to a similar Roman holiday. He also says none of the church fathers in the first

00:08:21.680 centuries of the church makes any reference to a supposed connection between Christmas and

00:08:26.640 Saturnalia or Sol Invictus. There is no suggestion that the birth of Jesus was set at the time of pagan

00:08:33.960 holidays until the 12th century. And Christmas was moved from January 6th to December 25th to

00:08:44.100 correspond with Sol Invictus. Centuries later, post-enlightenment scholars of comparative religions

00:08:49.880 began popularizing the idea that the early Christians retrofitted winter solstice festivals

00:08:55.920 for their own purposes, for the first millennium of the church's history. There is also an argument,

00:09:04.860 an anonymous Christian treatise argues from 4th century North Africa stated that March 25th was

00:09:10.420 the day of the passion of the Lord and of his conception. For on that day, he was conceived on the

00:09:17.020 same that he suffered. So that has been a point that has been made throughout church history that

00:09:23.380 maybe it is kind of accurate or pretty accurate that Jesus was born on December 25th. Maybe it

00:09:30.100 doesn't have anything to do with the solstice or any of these pagan holidays. Maybe it doesn't even

00:09:36.360 have to do with Christians after Constantine taking over and trying to Christianize pagan Rome. Maybe it

00:09:42.960 actually does align with when the conception was in March, they say, and in December. So I think the summary

00:09:52.520 of this is really that it's kind of complicated. And no one really knows for sure. No one totally knows for

00:09:59.260 sure why Christmas is when it is, and why we have some of the traditions we do around Christmas, why some of the

00:10:08.040 early church fathers thought that celebrating birth was kind of a pagan practice, and why other church

00:10:13.940 fathers and later church fathers actually said, no, this is something that we do need to celebrate and

00:10:19.900 something that we need to recognize. And we could spend a really long time on the history of the debate,

00:10:27.960 the discussion, the back and forth, and what the Christianizing of the ancient world really looked

00:10:33.480 like, and how Christians were ambassadors of redemption, and in a lot of ways were, in the

00:10:39.940 true effective sense, culture warriors that sought to Christianize every sphere that they occupied.

00:10:47.840 That could be an entire podcast series in itself. But to summarize it, it's a little bit complicated.

00:10:55.200 There are different parts like the tree and the holly and the stars and the tinsel and all of that,

00:11:01.400 that some people say have its roots in ancient pagan Rome. Some people say, no, Christians brought this

00:11:08.080 in as they were celebrating Christmas for exclusively Christian reasons. And so there's a lot of debate and

00:11:14.720 a lot of discussion around the origin of Christmas and how it has changed over time. This is something

00:11:24.360 that Charles Spurgeon says, and I'll kind of go back and forth to some of his arguments about this and some

00:11:30.880 of his statements about this, because I think that they are, to use an overused term today,

00:11:36.400 like nuanced in a very compelling and persuasive and biblical way.

00:11:43.880 So Charles Spurgeon said this about Christmas. He said,

00:11:46.660 We venture to assert that if there be any day of the year of which we may be pretty sure that it was

00:11:51.620 not the day on which the Savior was born, it is the 25th of December. So he doesn't buy the

00:11:56.780 assertion from North Africa centuries before that said that this was probably the day of the birth

00:12:01.420 of Christ. He says, Regarding not the day, let us nevertheless give thanks to God for the gift

00:12:08.900 of his dear son. So he makes varying but not contradictory arguments about Christmas,

00:12:16.700 that Christmas is not necessarily a special day above any other day. We don't know that this is when

00:12:23.760 Jesus was born. We don't give in to a lot of the commercialization or the paganization of Christ's

00:12:31.100 birth. But we should be celebrating the birth of Christ. That is something that we should honor,

00:12:37.740 that we should revere. So if it is this time of year that we are particularly and especially

00:12:45.100 focusing on that, then let us do it and let us celebrate it. Now I will get into that John Piper

00:12:52.320 argument that I mentioned at the beginning and then I kind of diverted into another argument. I'll tell

00:12:58.360 you what he says based on scripture about the pagan origins of Christmas and if or how Christians

00:13:06.080 should celebrate it. But let me pause.

00:13:18.300 Okay, so here's what John Piper argues. He argues on the one hand that we should be keeping ourselves

00:13:26.820 from idols. And I would say that the people who say that we should not be celebrating Christmas in this way,

00:13:33.260 we shouldn't be having the gifts and the tree and all of that. We shouldn't try to take over, take on that

00:13:40.000 which is actually secular. I think that the motivation there, in the purest sense, from those who are

00:13:47.740 motivated, you know, by godly intentions, is to protect themselves from idolatry, to protect themselves from

00:13:55.800 worldly distractions and to ensure that they really are focusing on Christ. We say Jesus is the reason

00:14:03.480 for the season, but in reality, Jesus is the reason for every season. He is not more the reason for this

00:14:08.620 season than he is, you know, the reason for spring or the reason for summer or fall or any other time

00:14:15.680 of the year. So I think that there is, can be at least, a good motivation behind just kind of rejecting

00:14:22.900 a lot of the celebrations that we do see at Christmas time. And John Piper acknowledges that.

00:14:29.340 He mentions 1 Kings 12, 28, in which King Jeroboam, he was an idolatrous king. He made two golden calves and

00:14:36.240 called the people to worship them. And then verse 33 says that he devised the time for that celebration

00:14:41.400 out of his own heart. The essential problem there was idolatry, two golden calves. And so some people

00:14:50.880 would say, John Piper acknowledges, that Christmas is similar to that, that they devised a day out of

00:14:56.520 their own heart, December 25th, to celebrate Christ's birth, but really just used it as a justification to

00:15:03.480 engage in pagan celebrations and to do the things that we want to do, get the things that we want,

00:15:09.200 take off work, whatever it is. And Deuteronomy 12, 31 warrants God's people as they enter into the

00:15:16.920 promised land that you will not, you shouldn't celebrate and you shouldn't worship God the way

00:15:23.540 that they worship their idols. They even burn their sons and their daughters in the fire to their gods.

00:15:31.180 Do what I have commanded you, God says, and do not add to it or take from it. And there are dozens and

00:15:37.340 dozens, John Piper says, of meticulous stipulations in the Old Testament about how to approach God,

00:15:42.580 how the priests are to function, the sacrifices they were to be doing, the sacred spaces to be used.

00:15:49.380 Now, we are not governed by all of the same specifics that the people of Israel were governed by,

00:15:55.180 but the principle stands that we are not to mimic the worship and the celebration and the

00:16:01.640 orders that are followed by the world. And then he goes to the New Testament, Mark 7, 9,

00:16:08.640 they were rejecting the commandment to honor your father and mother by diverting financial care.

00:16:13.680 This is the Pharisees, I believe, diverting financial care from their parents to an ostensibly

00:16:19.340 worshipful dedication of their money to the synagogue instead of their parents' needs.

00:16:23.440 The issue there was not that traditions exist, that's not the problem,

00:16:26.500 but that they contradict the commandment of God, honor your father and mother. And so the point

00:16:32.960 that John Piper is making here is that there's nothing wrong with traditions. There's obviously

00:16:38.160 nothing wrong with dedicating money to the synagogue, but doing that for show, doing that for some kind

00:16:47.460 of clout, as the leaders there seem to be doing while trying to get around one of the 10 commandments,

00:16:55.500 honor your father and mother. So giving money to the synagogue to make them look important at the

00:17:01.640 expense of the needs of their parents, Jesus says, is wicked. Again, that is a form of idolatry.

00:17:08.020 It's a form of self-idolatry. So the traditions weren't the problem, but the heart behind them were.

00:17:13.860 That is a theme, of course, that we see throughout scripture, but especially in Jesus's ministry.

00:17:18.620 A lot of people think that Jesus kind of diminishes the importance of sin, that he doesn't really

00:17:22.980 talk about sin. Actually, he doubles down on sin and goes deeper than what we actually say or do,

00:17:30.500 but he goes into the heart, our motivations, what we think. He actually takes purity and holiness

00:17:37.100 and righteousness and obedience to another level. The problem with the Pharisees, according to Jesus,

00:17:43.240 was not that they were holy. It's not that they were obedient. It's not that they were righteous.

00:17:48.080 A lot of people think that the problem with the Pharisees, according to Jesus, is that they cared

00:17:52.760 about rules too much. No, it's because they didn't actually care enough. They weren't righteous

00:17:58.440 enough. They weren't holy enough because their hearts weren't in it. Their hearts were far from

00:18:03.960 God. That's why Jesus calls them whitewashed tombs. You look really good on the outside and on the

00:18:08.720 inside, you are decaying. So Jesus actually takes the expectation of God's people to an even higher

00:18:15.200 level because he takes it to a heart level. And if you're asking, well, how can I possibly make sure

00:18:20.620 that my heart is totally pure before God? How can I make sure that every intention that I have

00:18:25.700 is holy and righteous as Jesus apparently is demanding of people in the New Testament? Well,

00:18:30.860 of course, that is where Jesus comes in. That's where he comes in to give us a new heart,

00:18:36.160 to make us new creations, to die in our stead because we couldn't follow the law to a T,

00:18:40.840 because we couldn't be perfectly obedient and perfectly righteous. And therefore we couldn't

00:18:45.060 ever make ourselves acceptable to God. But Jesus, through his sacrifice, makes us acceptable to God

00:18:50.780 by wiping our slate clean, by making us new, by standing in our stead, by being our advocate.

00:19:01.000 So that's just an aside to there. Jesus, in this passage, just as he is in all passages,

00:19:06.500 he is getting down to the heart of the matter. And really, that is also the thrust of Piper's

00:19:13.740 argument here about Christians, about Christmas getting to the heart of the matter, why we are

00:19:19.780 doing what we do when it comes to December 25th or really any day. John Piper goes on to say,

00:19:26.040 Jeremiah 10, 2 through 5 says, learn not the way of the nations. And this is a reference that

00:19:31.300 you'll hear a lot from people who don't believe in celebrating Christmas at all. A tree from the

00:19:37.160 forest is cut down and worked with an axe by the hands of a craftsman. They decorate it with silver

00:19:42.000 and gold. They fasten it with hammer and nails so that it cannot move. Their idols are like scarecrows

00:19:46.960 in a cucumber field and they cannot speak. They have to be carried. So a lot of people say, well,

00:19:53.560 this sounds like cutting down a Christmas tree and nailing it to a stand so it can't move and putting

00:19:59.620 tinsel and ornaments and lights on it. Isn't that what Jeremiah is talking about? Why are we doing

00:20:04.300 that? We shouldn't be doing that. The Bible is pretty clear that we shouldn't be doing that.

00:20:08.100 But again, the point that John Piper makes, the point that I am making here, it's not that cutting

00:20:13.160 down a tree is bad. It's not that ornaments are bad. It's not that lights are bad. It is talking about

00:20:19.540 the absurdity of worshiping an inanimate object that cannot hear you, that cannot save you. The point

00:20:26.840 here was about idolatry. The point here was about what they're worshiping, not the act of cutting down

00:20:31.760 a tree. And I think that we see that in 1 Corinthians 10, 25 through 28, the principle of

00:20:39.380 what we're talking about. So here's what Paul says to the Christians in Corinth. Eat whatever is sold in

00:20:45.140 the meat market without raising any question on the ground of conscience. For, and this is the point

00:20:51.380 that I also made, this is the reference that I made when we were talking about whether or not

00:20:55.820 Halloween is really a pagan holiday that Christians should have no part of, Paul references Psalm 24,

00:21:03.260 1. The earth is the Lord's and the fullness thereof, the world and those who dwell therein.

00:21:10.720 For he has founded upon the seas and established it upon the rivers. That's Psalm 24, 2. Paul doesn't

00:21:18.040 go that far, but just to give you a little context. He says,

00:21:22.980 the earth is the Lord's and the fullness thereof in 1 Corinthians 10. If one of the unbelievers

00:21:29.000 invites you to dinner and you are disposed to go, eat whatever is set before you without raising any

00:21:34.420 question on the ground of conscience. But if someone says to you, this has been offered and

00:21:38.160 sacrificed to an idol, then do not eat it for the sake of the one who informed you and for the sake

00:21:44.520 of conscience. And so he is saying here, don't eat meat sacrificed to idols if you're told that

00:21:51.000 it's sacrificed to idols, but not because the meat is bad. Not because there is something inherently

00:21:55.860 evil about the meat because an idol is nothing. It's just a piece of carved wood or it's a tree

00:22:00.500 or it's a golden calf. It has absolutely no power whatsoever. It's just an inanimate object. So it's

00:22:06.160 not that the meat is bad. There's no power in that. But the only reason to reject meat that you know

00:22:12.520 is sacrificed to idols is because it could hurt the conscience of the person who told you that.

00:22:19.000 So if the person who told you, hey, this meat is sacrificed to idols is either like a weak believer

00:22:23.540 and just can't engage in any part of that without being tempted to sin or without losing faith,

00:22:29.060 or is an unbeliever who expects Christians to be completely set apart from anything to do with

00:22:38.140 what is sacrificed to idols. And it could hurt your testimony in some way, or it could cause confusion

00:22:44.220 in their lives. Then you should refuse that meat. It's a matter of love to other people. It's really

00:22:51.020 not a matter of eating this meat sacrifice to idols of obedience to God. John Piper says the principle

00:22:58.060 in this passage is this. In Christ, Christians are free to eat meat that has been offered to idols,

00:23:02.200 provided there is no idolatry involved. And provided we are not sending any clear messages to the pagan,

00:23:07.760 to the world that we worship what they worship. And that is a really serious principle. I mean,

00:23:15.360 there is a reason why I don't post anytime I drink alcohol, which I very rarely do. But maybe I'll have

00:23:24.780 a glass of champagne, or maybe on a rare occasion, I'll have a margarita or something like that.

00:23:30.740 The reason that I don't post that on Instagram is not because I think it's a sin. It's not a sin

00:23:36.180 to drink alcohol. It is a sin to get drunk, as we read in the book of Ephesians, because you can't be

00:23:41.920 filled with the Holy Spirit and be filled with alcohol. One of those things is going to control

00:23:47.080 you at all times. But because I know that there could either be people, Christians, who that tempts

00:23:55.560 them to sin, or it could hurt my testimony, perhaps among unbelievers. And so that is not something

00:24:03.800 that I regularly publicize, or I try not to regularly publicize. If I have, I haven't really

00:24:08.800 thought about it. And I should have thought about it. But it's not because me drinking is a sin.

00:24:14.220 It's not even necessarily because me talking about drinking is a sin, because it's not. But the reason

00:24:18.820 why I don't glorify it on social media is for the sake of other people. So it is the same principle

00:24:26.320 here. And so how does this tie in to Christmas? It ties into Christmas because the things that we do

00:24:34.240 at Christmas, the traditions that we engage in, the gifts that we give, the songs that we sing,

00:24:40.260 it's really about the state of the heart and how we are using these things to engage with

00:24:46.220 non-believers and to give our testimony to the world. Now, I think, and this is my wording,

00:24:54.600 I'm sure that probably John Piper would agree with this, that there are, of course, limitations to

00:25:01.260 that, in that the world isn't our judge. Like, we are not trying to win the approval of the world.

00:25:08.440 We are not trying to fit into the world's definitions of what is right, what is wrong,

00:25:13.060 and what is loving and what is not. We hear all the time from non-Christians that a Christian

00:25:18.660 isn't a true Christian if they believe in biblical, natural marriage. So we're not trying to win the

00:25:26.120 approval and get a pat on the back from the world. We are simply talking about situations in which it

00:25:33.940 could be perceived that we worship the same worldly things that they do. And I think that applies to

00:25:41.640 Christmas in that as we engage in all of the fun things that Christmas involves, that we are very

00:25:49.080 careful about what and how we celebrate, that we are very careful about what is going on in our own

00:25:56.000 hearts. What are we worshiping? What are we celebrating? Because the truth is the earth is the Lord's.

00:26:02.300 Every day is God's. Pagans don't own any day. Satan doesn't own any day. He doesn't own the trees.

00:26:09.340 He doesn't own tinsel. He doesn't own any Bing Crosby songs. He doesn't own these things. All of

00:26:18.180 these things were created by people that God created. All of them are a part of God's world.

00:26:25.480 This is our Father's world, and He owns it. And Christians are absolutely in the business of

00:26:32.240 redemption. We are in the business of taking things that maybe have been used for a bad purpose or an

00:26:40.820 old purpose and making them new and using the things that God created to worship Him and to glorify Him.

00:26:47.960 God made trees. He created this colorful, beautiful world and singing voices and all of these things

00:26:55.580 that can be used to celebrate Him and celebrate the birth of the Lord. I think it's really important for

00:27:02.040 Christians to be careful to not esteem Christmas any higher than any other day. And gosh, I'm just as

00:27:10.460 guilty of that, that Christmas or Easter is a day that is somehow more important than other days or

00:27:17.740 these are the seasons of the year that I reserve meditation on Christ's birth or meditation on the

00:27:24.700 resurrection when really these are parts of the gospel. And the gospel is supposed to characterize

00:27:29.320 every day of our lives. And here's what Charles Spurgeon kind of has to say about that.

00:27:35.260 We esteem every day alike, but still, as the seasons suggest, thoughts of Jesus. Let us joyfully

00:27:42.080 remember our dear Redeemer's glorious birth. Who but He was ever longed for by such a multitude of hearts?

00:27:49.300 When else did angels indulge in midnight songs? Or did God hang a new star in the sky? To whose

00:27:57.180 cradle did rich and poor make so willing a pilgrimage and offer such hardy and unsought

00:28:03.240 oblations? Well, may earth rejoice. Well, may all men cease their labor to celebrate the great birthday

00:28:10.200 of Jesus. Let gladness rule the hour. Let holy song and sweetheart music accompany our soul

00:28:17.920 and the raptures of joy. So when it comes to Christmas, I think that Christians should

00:28:23.580 abandon any superstitious part of it. We should do our best to exclude ourselves from the celebrations

00:28:29.700 that have to do with Christmas that are not glorifying to the Lord, that do maybe push our

00:28:35.200 hearts or push our children's hearts towards idolatry and towards greed and towards just getting

00:28:41.780 and accumulating and accumulating and instead engage in all of the traditions and the practices that are

00:28:47.720 constantly pointing us to the Lord. And that is true, again, not just of the Christmas season,

00:28:53.040 but of all seasons in the year. So it's Christmas pagan. There might be some pagan parts of the origin

00:29:00.740 of Christmas. Is it okay and even good for Christians to celebrate Christmas? Yes, I think so. The earth is the

00:29:08.560 Lord's and the fullness thereof. This is His day, just like any other day. And there is always a reason

00:29:16.100 to celebrate the birth of the Lord. And guess what? Christmas this year falls on a Sunday. We should be

00:29:23.340 going to church, by the way, on Christmas Day. If you were tempted, like I was, to think, well, I don't

00:29:30.300 want to go out of the house on Christmas Day. I just want to wear my pajamas all day. I don't want to go

00:29:35.580 anywhere. You know what? That was my first thought too. But then my husband, being the amazing man and

00:29:42.320 leader that he is, he immediately was like, we're going to church. It's Sunday and it's Christmas.

00:29:48.580 And I kind of had to snap back and say, wow, why would I even have the thought that we wouldn't go

00:29:54.860 to worship the Lord on Christmas Day at church? So I encourage you to do the same. And I totally

00:30:01.700 understand if that was not your first inclination. Sadly, it wasn't mine either. But that is absolutely

00:30:08.180 a day that Christians should be gathering together. And this is actually a perfect transition into the

00:30:15.880 conversation about Santa and why my family does not do Santa, why we don't tell our kids that Santa is

00:30:23.800 real, because we want to engage in the parts of Christmas that point us to Jesus. The whole reason

00:30:32.120 that we even have a Christmas that Christians celebrate. But let me pause before we get into it.

00:30:38.540 Okay, Santa Claus. This is maybe one of my hottest takes, maybe one of my most controversial opinions

00:30:57.900 is that I do not believe in Christians telling their children that Santa Claus is real. Now,

00:31:07.460 if you do that, that is not me questioning your sanctification or salvation in any way.

00:31:14.140 I have a lot of godly friends who have chosen differently. I was told that Santa Claus was real

00:31:19.560 for a period of time growing up. And yet, as I've thought about it, I of course, I used to think that

00:31:25.740 why wouldn't we tell our children that Santa Claus is real? It's fun. It's fun for them to like,

00:31:32.560 think of the wonder and the magic and the mystery. And there's so much innocence wrapped up in that

00:31:40.440 there's a lot of fun. And I can see that. I mean, I think I had fun with it growing up. And I

00:31:46.100 certainly thought at one point that I would want to pass it down to my kids. We, you know,

00:31:51.300 would put out cookies and milk for Santa Claus, I would put out some fruit on the back porch for

00:31:56.540 Rudolph. I'm just, you know, being considerate over here. And so there's a lot of fun. There's a

00:32:02.560 lot of fun tradition, I think, that comes with telling your kids about Santa Claus and pretending

00:32:08.360 that Santa Claus is real. But there are a few reasons why we are simply not doing that as a family

00:32:15.500 for our kids. Number one, I do not want to set the precedent of lying to my children. I know that

00:32:26.520 it's just pretend and we can call it pretend. Sure. We can say that it's not lying, that it's not

00:32:33.280 deceit, that it is, I don't know, helping our kids' imagination. But at the end of the day,

00:32:39.920 we are telling them something that's not true. So we can use all kinds of euphemisms and excuses for

00:32:45.520 that. But at the end of the day, we are trying to convince them of something that we know is not

00:32:49.860 correlated to any kind of reality. I remember, and this is not going to be every kid's story,

00:32:55.940 I understand that. This is very much my personality. I found out when I was six that

00:33:00.920 Santa wasn't real. And I didn't want to find out that Santa wasn't real. But that's what happens

00:33:05.380 when you have older brothers who are a lot older than you at the time. And my oldest brother,

00:33:11.880 and he is a very, he's a very kind person. And so he wasn't being cruel to me or anything like that.

00:33:16.980 But, you know, he was 16 years old. And so 16 year old boys say things like this.

00:33:22.000 I said something about the tooth fairy coming to, you know, give me money for my tooth,

00:33:28.380 duh. And he, I don't remember exactly what he said, but he kind of scoffed at that,

00:33:33.360 that I said that I said that the tooth fairy like left something on my window,

00:33:37.920 and he scoffed at it. And, you know, I was kind of embarrassed. And I was like,

00:33:43.120 why did he scoff at me saying something about the tooth fairy? That's strange. And I laid in my bed,

00:33:49.700 and I thought about that reaction. And then I was like, you know what? I'm just going to ask my

00:33:54.180 mom tomorrow. She'll tell me the truth. She'll tell me if the tooth fairy is real. So I remember

00:33:58.880 asking my mom in the backyard if the tooth fairy was real. And when I asked her, she told me the

00:34:06.380 truth. She said, no, the tooth fairy is not real. And then it was like, boom, boom, boom. Easter bunny,

00:34:11.640 Santa Claus. It just, I just all put it together. Deductive reasoning. Well, if that's not real,

00:34:16.480 well, then this isn't real either. And I was really sad. And I was embarrassed that all these

00:34:21.900 people, my brothers and my parents and my grandmother, that they all knew something that

00:34:26.920 I didn't and that they had been tricking me for several years and that they let me get excited

00:34:31.060 about it and that none of it was true. Now, again, that might not be true of every child who finds out

00:34:39.900 that Santa Claus is not real. They could be totally fine with it. However, I remember feeling

00:34:46.180 betrayed. I remember feeling hurt. And there are a lot of things that we have to try to convince our

00:34:52.940 kids of that might be difficult for them to grasp, but difficult for them to believe. Like, I want the

00:34:57.400 best for you. There's a reason why you can't have three cupcakes after dinner every night.

00:35:03.420 Vegetables are good for you. Or that, hey, here's an important one. God is real. Jesus died,

00:35:09.900 on the cross for your sins. There are a lot of things that we are working really hard as parents

00:35:14.260 to tell our children about. And I don't want to cause a crack in their trust at all by lying to

00:35:23.780 them about something that is pretty big, which is that Santa Claus is bringing you gifts and placing

00:35:29.200 them under the tree and that he is traveling the world every Christmas Eve to do the same for every

00:35:34.780 child on earth. I want to, as much as I can, lay a foundation of trust. I want them to know,

00:35:43.300 I want them to be able to say and believe and know it's true that my parents don't lie to me.

00:35:48.620 They wouldn't lie to me. They wouldn't be deceitful. They wouldn't manipulate me in any way. So if my

00:35:53.520 parents tell me something, then I can trust them because I know it's true. And so that is as much as I

00:36:00.200 possibly can, how the kind of precedent that I want to set and how I want to lay a foundation

00:36:05.280 of just integrity and trustworthiness for my children. And that last point that I made

00:36:12.260 about God being real, and that is something that we are constantly trying to tell our children about,

00:36:19.500 that is, of course, the much bigger part of this for me, is that we are constantly telling our

00:36:25.620 children, Jesus is the reason for the season. Jesus is the reason for the season. Remember Jesus.

00:36:29.420 It's more important to give gifts than get gifts. But it's completely unfair that we are

00:36:34.880 simultaneously trying to tell them that while we are distracting them with all of this other stuff

00:36:41.700 that is much easier for their young brains to focus on, that they are going to get all of these

00:36:50.220 gifts. I'm not saying that it's wrong to give gifts to our kid, but making Christmas about that,

00:36:56.340 focusing on that, and then focusing on this unseen person who is not only giving you gifts,

00:37:03.400 but is basing the gifts that he has given you off of a list that he has created, which is based on

00:37:09.560 whether or not that child has been naughty or nice. That is not the message that I want to

00:37:14.620 communicate to my child. When I am trying to teach my child about grace, when I am trying to teach my

00:37:21.340 child about obedience motivated by love, by gratitude, and I am trying to teach my child

00:37:27.320 about what Christmas is, what Advent is, why Jesus came, I mean, all of those things are less

00:37:34.680 instantly gratifying than a bunch of the other stuff that centers on Santa Claus bringing you gifts.

00:37:42.100 And I also think that Santa Claus is like a cheaper and legalistic version of God. That Santa Claus,

00:37:52.040 as I said, he is giving gifts based on whether you are good or bad. And he is watching you to,

00:38:02.380 he's seeing you when you're sleeping. He knows when you're awake. He knows if you've been bad or good.

00:38:08.280 So be good for goodness sake or else what? You're not going to get a good gift. You're going to get

00:38:13.220 coal in your stocking. You better obey mommy and daddy because there is this unseen person in the

00:38:18.040 North Pole who is checking to see if you have been naughty or nice. Is that the gospel? Is that what we

00:38:27.520 want them to be motivated by when it comes to good works, when it comes to obedience? I don't think so.

00:38:36.540 I mean, the fact is, is that there really is an unseen being. There really is an omnipotent,

00:38:45.700 omniscient being who sees you when you're sleeping and who knows when you're awake,

00:38:49.660 who can discern your thoughts from afar, who knows the motivation of your heart.

00:38:56.920 There is an all-powerful, all-knowing, all-seeing, all-present being who can see and knows every part

00:39:05.440 of you. There really is a gift giver. And his name is not Santa Claus. His name is God. It's Jesus

00:39:14.100 Christ. The very person, the very being that I am trying to get my kids to focus on all the time,

00:39:20.320 but especially as we're saying, this is the reason for Christmas. So why would I distract them

00:39:27.020 from that really good, really existent gift giver with a lesser and legalistic version?

00:39:39.820 James 1, 17, every good gift and every perfect gift is from where? The North Pole? No, it's from

00:39:49.320 above, coming down from the Father of lights with whom there is no variation or shadow due to change

00:39:56.680 every good gift and every perfect gift is from above. It comes from the Father who has also

00:40:03.700 given you parents and has given them whatever resources God has decided to give them. Your

00:40:10.460 parents are using real money, real gifts, real resources that God has given them to give you

00:40:16.780 good gifts. And that gift giving that your parents are doing for you is a representation of the gospel,

00:40:23.020 is a representation of God that you didn't do anything to earn these gifts. We're giving you

00:40:27.740 these gifts because we love you, because you're our child. I'm not giving you these gifts because you

00:40:33.320 are naughty or nice. I wasn't making a list. I wasn't tallying it up. And there isn't this guy at the

00:40:38.080 North Pole doing the same. I'm giving you these gifts freely. I'm giving you these gifts because you

00:40:43.700 are loved. And isn't that what God did for us through Christ? Isn't that what God does for us?

00:40:50.800 So to me, Santa is a distraction from the gospel. It's a cheap version of God. And I just don't want

00:41:01.480 to distract my kids. And that's not saying that we do it perfectly. And that's not to say that we don't

00:41:09.420 do a lot of fun things on Christmas. Not everything has to do with a nativity scene. Not everything has

00:41:16.720 to do with an Advent devotional. We do gifts. We have lots of fun traditions. We watch, at least

00:41:24.140 my husband and I do, and my parents, we watch It's a Wonderful Life. I mean, that's not necessarily

00:41:29.260 about the Christmas story. But in all of these things, we try to point them to Christ. In all of

00:41:35.620 these things, we try to point them to good gift giving and the good gift giver. And all of these

00:41:40.340 things, we try to point them to the gospel. In my opinion, Santa Claus is a distraction from that.

00:41:46.800 Now, I also don't think Santa Claus should be demonized. Like, I don't try to just hide Santa

00:41:51.840 Claus from my kids. I think that he can be a character of Christmas. That's fine. Or you can talk

00:41:58.680 about the real history of Saint Nicholas and how he gave children around 200 AD in a village all of

00:42:09.360 these gifts. And you can talk about his generosity. You can talk about his history that Saint Nicholas

00:42:13.820 was a real person and how we can learn from his charity and generosity. But again, that charity and

00:42:20.440 generosity comes from the love that Christ has given us in our hearts. It is a reflection of the love of

00:42:26.180 God demonstrated through Christ. And so there are a lot of ways to incorporate Santa Claus. I think

00:42:32.060 that's fine. One way I will not incorporate is by telling my children that he is real and is watching

00:42:38.900 them and gives them gifts. Again, just a very flimsy and cheap and false version of the gospel, which is

00:42:46.740 actual good news. So that's our reason. That's our reasoning for not engaging in the

00:42:55.900 traditional Santa Claus stuff. And I think it goes back to what we were talking about in the first

00:43:01.440 part and the first chunk of this episode is that we, I think, just have to be careful in the kinds

00:43:07.720 of traditions surrounding Christmas or any holiday or any time of the year that we are engaging in.

00:43:14.100 Traditions aren't bad. Holidays aren't bad. Time off isn't bad. Hot chocolate and trees and all of these

00:43:20.380 things. They are not bad. But what are they for? What are we doing them for? What is our heart behind

00:43:26.400 it? What is our intent? What are we teaching to and showing our children? So that's my summary. I could

00:43:31.620 probably talk about that a lot more. All right, we have a little bit of time left. And so I did want to

00:43:48.540 talk about because we mentioned it a little yesterday. I did want to talk about this ceremony

00:43:54.760 that our esteemed President Joe Biden had at the White House as he was signing the so-called Respect

00:44:01.020 for Marriage Act. Go back and listen to yesterday's episode. Joe Biden decided to include drag queens

00:44:07.220 that dance for children at bars in his signing ceremony. And this just shows, once again, like what

00:44:15.940 this bill is really about, it's not really about interracial and so-called gay marriage. This is

00:44:22.900 really just another step in the sexual revolution. It was to make a point trying to say that, you know,

00:44:30.640 Republicans who voted against this are bad and all of that. It just had to do with the circus that is

00:44:37.900 Joe Biden's White House. And he made a couple of incredible statements about the state of the country

00:44:44.280 um, and about the state of discrimination in the United States. So here's Joe Biden saying that gay

00:44:50.740 people are being run out of restaurants in the United States, apparently. When a person can be

00:44:56.880 married in the morning and thrown out of a restaurant for being gay in the afternoon, this is still wrong.

00:45:03.340 Um, is that happening? Are gay people being thrown out of a restaurant?

00:45:13.100 I would love to, I would love to know if that is happening anywhere in the country.

00:45:19.240 And even if it were, is that, is that relevant to what we're talking about?

00:45:23.580 And I think he's talking about like the Supreme Court cases that we've talked about recently,

00:45:30.040 303 Creative and Masterpiece Cake Shop. Of course, that was from a few years ago,

00:45:35.800 uh, Christian business owners who said, Hey, you know what? I'm not going to make a website that

00:45:39.800 celebrates the marriage of two women or two men. And it's the same thing with that Jack Phillips said.

00:45:46.080 It's not the same thing as kicking someone out of your restaurant because they're gay.

00:45:50.560 It's not the people that they are refusing. It is the particular kind of content that they're

00:45:55.120 refusing. If a gay person or a transgender person had walked into Jack Phillips's Masterpiece Cake

00:46:01.860 Shop in Colorado and said, Hey, can you bake me a cake? I'm gay, by the way. And then he would have

00:46:08.800 been like, sure, I don't care what your sexual orientation is. Um, he would have baked the cake,

00:46:17.660 but because they said, uh, that they wanted a cake that specifically celebrated their wedding

00:46:24.120 ceremony. He said, well, I can't be a part of that celebration. And of course that's his first

00:46:27.920 amendment, right? And leftists are saying, no, the state should actually compel Christian business

00:46:32.920 owners or any business owner to say things that they don't actually believe in that don't align

00:46:36.860 with their beliefs. It's the same thing with 303 Creative, another, a business out of Colorado,

00:46:43.200 the web design service that said, I don't want to create websites that are celebrating

00:46:46.820 things that I don't believe in. I will serve these people if they want me to serve them,

00:46:52.560 but I am not going to make this kind of material that violates my conscience. And again, that is

00:46:58.580 their first amendment, right? The state of Colorado hates Christians and doesn't believe that they should

00:47:03.520 have these first amendment rights. And hopefully the Supreme court, when they decide on this 303

00:47:07.500 creative case will rectify that, um, come June when the decision is supposed to be, uh, when the

00:47:14.920 decision is supposed to be published. And so that example that he gave, not only is it like not

00:47:21.460 happening and even if it were, okay, there's a lot of crazy things that happen across the United States

00:47:26.800 that is not indicative of some like widespread problem. Literally 70% of Americans believe that

00:47:33.240 homosexuality is a-okay and that gay marriage is something that should be like accepted and

00:47:40.380 celebrated. And that is a huge jump from where it was even just seven years ago when the majority of

00:47:45.880 Americans did not actually believe that. So we're not at risk there. They're trying to create a problem,

00:47:51.940 invent a problem out of thin air and, you know, use it to berate the other side about it. Um, and of

00:48:01.540 course, interracial marriage is not at risk. That's like, it hasn't been a problem in a very long

00:48:08.240 time. No one, no one is saying that a black person and an Asian person should not be married.

00:48:16.080 No state is trying to push that. Now, Justice Thomas did say in his decision that a lot of

00:48:22.940 these Supreme court decisions saying that these things are a right were based on faulty, uh, reasoning

00:48:29.120 and that they weren't actually constitutional. The same thing with like guaranteeing the right to

00:48:34.120 birth control. Um, but he is not saying whether or not these things are moral or whether or not

00:48:39.280 these things should be legal. He's just saying that those specific Supreme court decisions weren't

00:48:43.340 actually decided constitutionally. And he of course included Roe v. Wade in that. And so Democrats are

00:48:50.440 taking that as, Oh, these things are at risk. The ironic thing is, is that the so-called respect for

00:48:55.240 marriage act without any religious freedom protections, um, uh, is going to end up causing

00:49:01.980 all kinds of litigation for Christian companies and Christian, uh, organizations and churches that

00:49:09.560 are going to be threatened by these activist individuals, uh, and are going to be told,

00:49:15.060 you know, you have to perform our wedding or you have to bake this cake or whatever it is,

00:49:19.520 or else we're going to sue you. The case is probably going to make its way to the Supreme

00:49:24.180 court. And, uh, it may very well lead to one day the overturning of Obergefell. So like best of luck

00:49:33.540 to you guys. Good job. Um, I mean, you keep on passing these laws, like eventually, I mean,

00:49:41.600 I'm just not sure that you're going to like the conclusion to the litigation that is going to come

00:49:46.480 from a bill like this. All right, here's what else Joe Biden had to say. We need to challenge

00:49:51.140 the hundreds of callous, cynical laws introduced in the States, targeting transgender children,

00:49:58.280 terrifying families and criminalizing doctors who give children the care they need. We have to

00:50:04.420 protect these children so they know they're loved and that we will stand up for them and say,

00:50:10.500 I can seek for themselves. What? Okay. So he's talking about the genital,

00:50:16.140 mutilation of children. That's what he's talking about. He's talking about the laws that are saying,

00:50:20.860 Hey, a child, you know, the child that's brain, whose brain is not developed and who might just

00:50:26.720 be going through a hard time or might be dealing from trauma or might be on the autism spectrum,

00:50:31.320 or might just be confused about things. Like we shouldn't be able to put them on puberty blockers

00:50:36.660 and use the same drug that is used very often to chemically castrate serial pedophiles.

00:50:41.780 Like maybe we shouldn't be cutting off the healthy breasts of 12 year old girls as they

00:50:46.340 are in Kaiser Permanente in Oakland, California, just because she says that she doesn't like her

00:50:50.880 body. Yeah, I absolutely think that should be illegal. That is like the bare minimum. Are you

00:50:55.760 kidding me? And there's no solid data proving at all whatsoever that these kinds of procedures

00:51:02.340 are actually helping these kids who identify as transgender, who are dealing with depression and

00:51:08.600 anxiety and suicidal ideation. If anything, I guarantee these things are making it worse.

00:51:14.400 Listen to the stories of the detransitioners, how they were just pushed through the psychologists

00:51:19.380 and the surgeons and all of the doctors that no one cared. In a lot of these cases that in a lot of

00:51:24.880 these cases, no one stopped to ask these kids, these 17, 18 year olds, are you sure? Are you sure?

00:51:32.680 Like, let's talk about some of the underlying mental health issues. Let's talk about some of your

00:51:37.320 sexual trauma that you've gone through, especially when it is with girls. With girls, what I found

00:51:42.520 it's typically underlying trauma and sexual abuse that they have endured, and they are trying to

00:51:48.760 make themselves seem less vulnerable by so-called transitioning. A lot of times with boys, it might

00:51:55.660 be sexual trauma, but it has a lot to do with addiction to pornography and loneliness and isolation

00:52:01.980 and different forms of confusion there. And yet, rather than addressing these issues, people are

00:52:08.860 making money off of the confusion and the distress and the despair of kids by permanently damaging their

00:52:14.300 bodies and causing them to be permanently sexually dysfunctional and sterile. It is criminal what we are doing

00:52:21.080 to children. And Joe Biden, the empath in chief, the moderate, the great uniter that the pro-life

00:52:32.560 evangelicals for Biden said that they were voting for for the sake of democracy and the sake of maturity

00:52:39.120 and the sake of normalcy. He's on board with that. Like, how does it feel? How does it feel?

00:52:44.980 All these so-called principled conservatives that think that they are finding, like, the perfect

00:52:51.340 balance of pluralism and religious liberty, who are constantly only ever asking Christians to

00:52:57.460 compromise morally, who are constantly trying to give people like Joe Biden and Democrats the benefit

00:53:03.780 of the doubt, who are always trying to soften their stances, always trying to soften the Democrat

00:53:09.460 stances when it comes to gender and when it comes to sexual perversion, when it comes to abortion?

00:53:17.420 Like, how does it feel to be constantly duped? How does it feel to be constantly on the wrong side of

00:53:23.780 these issues? To constantly tell conservative evangelicals that you're blowing things out of

00:53:29.460 proportion, that that's a slippery slope fallacy, that it's never going to go that far, it's never going

00:53:34.380 to go that direction, that the sexual revolution is not going to go that way, that, oh, it's just,

00:53:40.700 you know, you're just talking about fringe culture war issues. Those culture war issues don't really

00:53:44.860 matter. Let's send more money to Ukraine. How does it feel to be wrong literally constantly?

00:53:51.160 If Christians were simply on the same page about these moral and sexual issues, we wouldn't be

00:53:55.480 where we are. Just Christians. Just Christians. Not even talking about the rest of the world.

00:53:59.520 If just Christians could be clear on these issues, that mutilating a child's body just because they're

00:54:05.260 temporarily confused about something is evil and wrong and should be illegal, we would not be where

00:54:09.660 we are. But because literally millions of professing Christians have said, oh, it's probably not that

00:54:15.600 bad. It's not going to happen here. Or maybe it's not real. Or but Trump's tweets were really bad.

00:54:22.540 Here we are. Here we are. OK, well, here's Joe Biden making a little bit of sense. Many, many,

00:54:29.120 many moons ago, back in 2006. Marriage is between a man and a woman and states must respect that.

00:54:36.740 Nobody's violated that law. There's been no challenge to that law. Why do we need a constitutional

00:54:41.800 amendment? All right. So there he is. I mean, of course, this is just what politicians do.

00:54:49.500 They say that it's because of some moral courage that they later changed or they really evolved on

00:54:54.540 an issue. But both Joe Biden and and Barack Obama, as late as I don't know, I think probably 2010,

00:55:04.320 maybe maybe even 2011. They believed they said that they believe that marriage is between one man and

00:55:11.420 one woman. Now, whether they were being honest then or whether they're being honest now or who knows

00:55:17.480 when they were lying or when they were being just cynical politicians. But the fact of the matter is,

00:55:22.760 is that this was not very long ago. This was not very long ago that even the staunchest liberals

00:55:29.200 in this country were like, oh, you know what? I think changing the arrangement of marriage,

00:55:34.080 which is pre-civilizational and is based on biological complementarianism, without which we

00:55:40.340 can't produce children and without which we really can't protect children by giving them the mother and

00:55:45.040 the father that they need. Like, I think that messing that up is probably a bridge too far.

00:55:49.980 And people like to act like we are radical for still believing that, for believing what people

00:55:56.000 have believed for literally thousands of years. Well, I'm not going to be gaslit about that. And

00:56:00.920 when I see drag queens like Marty Cummings and Britta Filter, literally, at these ceremonies,

00:56:10.420 people who have danced for children, men dressing up as women scantily clad, I kind of think that

00:56:15.300 maybe, maybe we crazy conservative evangelicals are on to something.

00:56:30.820 Okay, so as I said, tomorrow, we will have Lynn Wilder. And let me just tell you real quick

00:56:35.440 about like how the rest of the week is or how the rest of the few weeks are going to go.

00:56:39.280 So for the next, for the three weeks, so next week, the week after that, and then the week

00:56:45.460 after that, we have brand new episodes coming out for you. We are not going to be in studio those

00:56:51.080 days, but we have been working very hard to record episodes that we know that you're going to love.

00:56:56.320 Lots of amazing interviews and some question and answer episodes that you guys have been asking for.

00:57:03.020 Next week, we've got four episodes. The next week, I think, is two episodes. So the week right before

00:57:09.160 wait, the week after Christmas is two episodes, I can't even remember when Christmas is. So next

00:57:15.000 week before Christmas, we've got four episodes Monday through Thursday. Week after that, we've

00:57:18.800 got two episodes. And then the week after New Year's, we will have three, I believe, and maybe

00:57:26.940 one replay episode. But all of those except for that potential replay episode will be brand new. And

00:57:32.720 they're like, really, really good. And I'm excited for you to hear them. We'll post about this on

00:57:37.680 social media too, so you don't miss it. All right. Thanks so much for tuning in. We will be back

00:57:42.620 tomorrow.

Relatable with Allie Beth Stuckey - December 14, 2022

Ep 724 ｜ Why My Family Celebrates Christmas but Not Santa

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