Family

10 Questions to Ask at a Christmas Gathering

Many of us struggle to make conversation at Christmas gatherings, whether church events, work-related parties, neighborhood drop-ins, or annual family occasions. Sometimes our difficulty lies in having to chat with people we rarely see or have never met.

At other times we simply don’t know what to say to those with whom we feel little in common. Moreover, as Christians we want to take advantage of the special opportunities provided by the Christmas season to share our faith, but are often unsure how to begin.

Here’s a list of questions designed not only to kindle a conversation in almost any Christmas situation, but also to take the dialog gradually to a deeper level. Use them in a private conversation or as a group exercise, with believers or unbelievers, with strangers or with family.

1. What’s the best thing that’s happened to you since last Christmas?
2. When was your best Christmas ever? Why?

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Holiday Traditions and Eating Disorder Rituals

Making the word of God of none effect through your tradition, which ye have delivered: and many such like things do ye. Mark 7:13


The holiday season is all about traditions. Families build their own, everything from the food to the decorations to the outings.

Traditions can be wonderful. However, seen through the prism of eating disorder rituals, they can be imprisoning.

“Rituals are both a tactic not to eat and also a piece of obsessionality associated with anorexia. When eating disorders are starting, people will try to make it look like they are eating by cutting things up and shifting food around on the plate so as to not draw attention to how little they are eating.” Cynthia Bulik, PhD, eating disorder specialist at the University of North Carolina- Chapel Hill

Traditions, rituals – it all represents the same unrealistic expectation: perfection, happiness and a sense of safety.

These rituals can be anything such as counting to a specific number how many times one chews his/her food before swallowing, meticulously counting calories or eating from the same bowl and spoon. There’s an exacting precision attached to keeping these behaviors – and a dreadful fear if one is unable to do so.

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Twelve Steps to a Better Holiday Season

1. We admitted that Thanksgiving and Christmas have a deeper meaning than drinking, drugging and overeating.

2. We came to believe that God, a power greater than ourselves, could help us see and celebrate the true meaning of Thanksgiving and Christmas.

3. We came to believe that God could help us appreciate the joyfulness of the season as intended by Him.

4. We made a searching and thorough examination of our relationship with our addictions, obsessions and overindulgences during the holidays.

5. We admitted to God the exact nature of our addictive habits and overindulgences during holiday seasons past.

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Thanksgiving: Tryptophanic Delight

Gravy will spatter, babies will blubber,
Toddlers will plaster their hair with the butter,
Turkeys so tender, fit to be carved
And tossed to the masses assembled, starved,
Grandpa will nod by the end of the meal
Then jump when the elbow from Grandma wheels,
Mountains of taters and stuffing will flow,
Bellies all ’round will grow, grow, grow.

Pastries and pies will add to the craze,
Burping and slurping continue unfazed,
Unfettered gobbling will finally peak,
A sudden a sleepiness fall on the feast,
Tables abandoned, couches claimed,
Children and elders alike feeling chains,
Tethers that tryptophan wields on the peeps,
Hypnotic aminos, now sleep, sleep, sleep.

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What Shall I Bring?

Deuteronomy 16:13-17 NIV
Celebrate the Feast of Tabernacles for seven days after you have gathered the produce of your threshing floor and your winepress. Be joyful at your Feast–you, your sons and daughters, your menservants and maidservants, and the Levites, the aliens, the fatherless and the widows who live in your towns. For seven days celebrate the Feast to the LORD your God at the place the LORD will choose. For the LORD your God will bless you in all your harvest and in all the work of your hands, and your joy will be complete. Three times a year all your men must appear before the LORD your God at the place he will choose: at the Feast of Unleavened Bread, the Feast of Weeks and the Feast of Tabernacles. No man should appear before the LORD empty-handed: Each of you must bring a gift in proportion to the way the LORD your God has blessed you.

Though the above Scripture refers to the Feast of Tabernacles, the Feast of Unleavened Bread, and the Feast of Weeks, these are not what I was thinking about when I came before my Lord today. In fact, it was not even the Thanksgiving Holiday that so many of my American friends are celebrating today. Truly, it is Christmas ~ the Season that is on so many of our minds despite the fact that we do not celebrate its Eve for another month from today. Why am I thinking about this today? And why did I choose this Scripture on these Feasts to talk about Christmas?

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Stretching Boundaries

Do not remove the ancient landmark that your ancestors set up. Proverbs 22:28 NRSV

“We are here taught not to invade another man’s right, though we can find ways of doing it ever so secretly and plausibly, clandestinely and by fraud, without any open force. Let not property in general be entrenched upon, by robbing men of their liberties and privileges, or of any just ways of maintaining them. Let not the property of particular persons be encroached upon. The land-marks, or meer-stones, are standing witnesses to every man’s right; let not those be removed quite away, for thence come wars, and fightings, and endless disputes; let them not be removed so as to take from thy neighbour’s lot to thy own, for that is downright robbing him and entailing the fraud upon posterity.” ~Matthew Henry

There are many different kinds of boundaries in life. Physical boundaries, such as those which border property; social boundaries, such as those outlined by manner and courtesy; relationship boundaries, such as those in families; spiritual boundaries, such as those outlined in scripture. It is often the human tendency to test or even stretch boundaries. Think about our kids. As they were growing up, didn’t they (sometimes? often?) test the boundaries we set, seeing if they really couldn’t do this or that?

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Unbelieving Spouse and Marriage

I am a Christian but I am married to an unbeliever for almost 7 months. My husband left home about 4 months ago. God wants to restore my marriage?

Marriage Guidance: You’re right. God does want to restore your marriage. So please print this marriage column out and read it with your husband so you both can be responsible for your “part” in the marriage. Let’s start from the beginning.

    * Who Established Marriage For His Purpose?
    * Who Restores Marriage?
    *Who Taught the Principles For Marriage?

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Memories: Ouch!

Restore unto me the joy of thy salvation;
and uphold me with thy free spirit. Psalm 51:12


Autumn floods me with childhood memories of locusts inhabiting our farm and caterpillars on twigs, kept on mason jars, just waiting to become monarch butterflies.

And, with that flooding, often comes the tinged bittersweet feelings that accompany a childhood innocence of long ago.

I recently caught a funny post on the internet. It read: “Memories: Ouch!”

They say humor is humor because it is unflinching truth. And that certainly was the case with this post.

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The Thinspo Slave Market

Stand fast therefore in the liberty wherewith Christ hath made us free, and be not entangled again with the yoke of bondage. Galatians 5:1


The artist Jean-Leon Gérôme’s 1884 work, “A Roman Slave Market” is a startling example of image on display. It portrays a naked woman, up for sale to an enthusiastic crowd. It made me think of how image, especially female image, is offered up so easily and cheaply in our culture today. Some of its most extreme manifestations, unfortunately, extend to disordered eating and body image issues.

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What Measures You?

I once came across an image of two little girls looking down at a bathroom scale. This was the caption:
“Don’t step on it. It makes you cry.”

Troubling.

Indeed, as a child, I had my own painful association it. There was once a time when I only saw a weird square in our bathroom. I didn’t give it much attention; I was more interested in the blue windmill stencil designs lining the tub and my rubber ducky. It was just a square, taking up space.

However, suddenly, Mom placed me on this square – and I became conscious of what I weighed. Apparently, it wasn’t a good digit as, with more frequency, I needed to get on this square. Now, suddenly, I had a “weight problem.”

And ever since, I no longer see just a square.

Throughout my childhood and adolescence, it dictated my worth, which was never good enough, always too big and always too heavy.

That drove me to eating disorders, with the hope as I became more punishing of myself, more “dedicated,” well, then my two-digit weight as a young adult would mean triumph. It, however, never really did become that reality, of course. Because, I could always lose more weight and somehow, magically, “be better.”

On and on and on I went, into my own hell…

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