Family Life Inside Out: Christmas All Year - 1/22/25
Published on Jan 22, 2025, 12:20:06 PM
Total time: 00:06:03
Published on Jan 22, 2025, 12:20:06 PM
Total time: 00:06:03
Christmas All Year
An "Inside Out" podcast from Family Life News
If you’re feeling the post-Christmas blues, this may encourage you: Christmas is too important to put away when we pack up the Nativity set. Journalist Lauren Dunn joins Martha for this Inside Out conversation inspired by Dunn’s “Boundless” article titled “Feeling the Post-Christmas Blues?”
Now that it’s a month after Christmas, maybe you’re feeling that January let-down that comes after all those weeks of store decorations, twinkling lights, and snowman inflatables in all the neighbors’ yards.
If so, be encouraged: we actually don’t have to put away Christmas when we pack up the Nativity set.
“There is so much build up, and then we wake up the next day and it’s over. At least we think it’s over,” says journalist Lauren Dunn. “But it’s really not. Because when we think about what we celebrate at Christmas--how God chose to enter our world, become one of us to save us from the sin that we could never save ourselves from--that’s still true in January. It’s still important in every month of the year.”
Dunn is the author of a 2021 Focus on the Family “Boundless” article titled “Feeling the Post-Christmas Blues?” She recommends that we continue to focus on the great gift of Jesus well after December. “This can be a great time to go through some of that Advent material or readings that maybe we didn’t have time for in December when we planned to go through it,” she says. “We can just really continue steeping ourselves in those truths of Christmas even as we’re flipping the calendar pages.”
Some who feel low in January will benefit from the help of a counselor. Others, feeling the impact of less sunshine, will feel better by getting outside, exercising, and being with friends.
“I think it’s also important in this grayer time of year just to have that mindset shift of reminding ourselves that Jesus came for this, too,” Dunn assures us. “He didn’t just come for the big celebrations and the festivities and the special days—I mean, He’s with us in those. But He came for real life. The daily grind.”
He came to be with us in our “every day.”
“Jesus came and lived with us. Day in, day out. He became flesh and dwelt among us," she says. "And even when He returned to heaven, He sent us the Holy Spirit. And so really, we can always, always celebrate that.”
Hear Martha Manikas-Foster's conversation with Lauren Dunn during this Inside Out podcast. And why not subscribe to this original podcast at either Apple podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, or FamilyLife.org?
Read Lauren Dunn’s orginal article that inspired this conversation from the website of Boundless, an online community of young adults.
Read more of her writing:
Listen, share or download additional episodes of Martha's "Inside Out" from www.FamilyLife.org/newspodcasts.
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