Welcome to the Awesome Marriage Podcast, a place for honest conversations about marriage and how to have the relationship that God has designed for you.

I am your co-host, Christina Dodson. On the show will be our host, Dr. Kim Kimberling and Nill Smith.

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So the holidays can be such a stressful time for numerous reasons, really, but it's really important that we learn to deal with the

stressors of holidays in a healthy way and really enjoy them with our spouse and just learn

how to deal with these holiday stressors together as a team. So this is a series on six tips for

surviving the holidays. In each episode, we're going to be talking about one tip for surviving

the holidays and coming out of them still happily married and connected. So this episode today

that we're going to be focusing on, the tip is keep Christ at the center. So Dr. Camma, what happens when we don't keep Christ at the center of our holidays and

especially Christmas?

Yeah.

I mean, it's like we miss the point.

I mean, and I think it's so easy in our culture to do that, to miss the point to go

through Christmas and think, oh, my gosh, we didn't spend any time thinking about really what

the real reason is and what we really are celebrating.

And I think culture leads us a lot of different ways. And I think, and that's fine. I don't,

I would never be one to say, don't enjoy all the things that come along with celebrating the holidays.

But the core, the reason we're doing is because of Christ's birth. And I think when, when I think we've done that better than some years than others, and as I look back, I would say the years that we have really kept him at the center when we've really been intentional about doing things that help us grow in him or celebrate him, those are really special years.

Those are really things where they come away with a lot more than a present that's gone in a few months or that you've, you know, done fitting more or whatever,

you know, those are the things that really build tradition. So I think we just miss, we miss the

point and then we miss out on a lot of what God would really have for us. It's a great time to just

grow your relationship with the Lord. Yeah, I agree. And I think when we don't keep the focus on

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