Hey there! You are listening to the Lazy Genius Podcast. I am Kendra Adachi and I'm here to help you be a genius about the things that matter and lazy about the things that don't.

Today is episode 241, a quick holiday pep talk. I always find that this week of Christmas I don't need more information. I just need encouragement to be a person and kind of exist in the information I already have.

So this is just a quick word for me to you. The first thing I want to say is that Christmas has a lot of faces. Some people adore it, some people tolerate it, some people survive it, some people genuinely dislike it.

So let's start here. We're going to park here on the faces of Christmas for just a second. One of the hardest things about being a person is feeling strongly about something and knowing that someone else feels strongly about the same thing but in a different way.

We don't quite know how to be ourselves in life and in individual conversation with people when we disagree. That is true obviously of politics, religion, parenting, finances and even Christmas.

We feel bad because we have strong opinions about something that matters deeply to us and we worry that sharing those strong opinions will or those strong feelings will alienate other people who don't feel the same way.

So for Christmas time in particular, I want to remind you to offer space for yourself and for others to feel whatever you and they need to feel. We can all exist together.

We can be kind to each other and our different perspectives and let those perspectives all count.

Now personally, I love Christmas. I like love Christmas. In fact, I would say Halloween through the end of the year. It's my favorite two months of the year.

November and December, including Halloween, I just adore it. We have lots to celebrate as a family. We have several family birthdays.

We have opening ceremonies to several parts of the season that I look forward to every year. We have family things. I have personal things that I love to do in those two months. I have a birthday myself. I just love November and December with my whole heart.

I also come from a family of divorce. So Christmas always reminds me of frankly the family that I don't have.

Also, because my husband, he doesn't particularly love Christmas, like at all. So even within myself and my family, Christmas has some very different faces. I love it. I love it.

But also those other things. Not to mention, November and December are also the two busiest months of the year, kind of for the same reasons.

And if I'm not intentional about them, I will drown even in the good things. And then yeah, I get sad sometimes about the complication of families. Just a lot of things. I was a couple weeks ago, I was talking with my church community group about this season.

And one of the women in my group shared how much she dislikes Christmas. Her family situation is complicated and hard. And she dreads a season where she has to be with a family that she feels disconnected from.

And I have no doubt so many of you feel that way. And it makes a season that is full of joy for so many people, even more complex. And then those of you, those of us who really do love Christmas and experience the joy of it really fully sometimes feel bad about doing that outwardly because we don't want to hurt people who don't like the season.

So not everyone has to love Christmas. A person can love it and dread it at the same time. There are just so many faces to how we experience it. So this is your permission to experience it. However you need to.

And then this is also your invitation to experience it. However you need to and leave space for others to do the same. We can keep working those muscles of loving each other in the middle of being in different places.

I also want to take a minute to say a couple of words to those of you who are in tricky church situations. So this podcast is not a religious one. And I don't often share my faith publicly. That's mostly because I want this space to be welcoming to people of all faiths and beliefs.

And you also don't have to be a Jesus person to have laundry problems. You know, so this podcast is for all the people. But I also know that a decent number of you are people of faith. And I would say a sizable number of those would identify as or once identified as Christian.

And as such, the last two years, especially have brought on a bit of a reckoning for many of you. I've had a lot of friends leave their churches. I've had a lot of friends leave faith behind entirely. We are all unpacking and unlearning and relearning and sitting in really complicated emptiness around the idea of what churches, what faith is, who Jesus is, who Christians are, who we personally want to be in the world.

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