The Complexities of Christmas

The Allender Center Podcast

The Allender Center

Psychology, Religion & Spirituality, Mental Health, Christianity, Trauma, Health & Fitness, Theology

4.6 • 628 Ratings

🗓️ 13 December 2024

⏱️ 45 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

With Christmas just around the corner, it’s easy to get lost in the comforts of gifts, gatherings, and familiar holiday carols. Yet in today’s podcast, Dan and Rachael remind us that the true celebration of Christmas means embracing the profound disruption Jesus brought to the world—a call to love, bless, and challenge the status quo, even in a world often defined by hatred and division.

This conversation invites us to see Christmas as more than a season of comfort. It’s a time of transformation, calling us to step into the work of love, justice, and restoration.

Merry Christmas from all of us here at the Allender Center! We’ll take a short break on the podcast next week, and will return on December 27th with a year-end reflection from Dan and Becky Allender.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Thank you for listening to the Allender Center podcast.
0:06.7	I'm Dr. Dan Allender.
0:08.7	And I'm Rachel Clinton-Centen.
0:10.5	We're fiercely committed to providing hope and healing to a fragmented world.
0:14.7	And restoration for the heart.
0:17.2	Thank you for joining us.
0:18.5	Let's get this conversation started.
0:30.7	Thank you for joining us. Let's get this conversation started. I'll say it again.
0:32.7	Merry Christmas to you, Rachel.
0:35.3	And to our audience, we are but days away from, obviously, a very sweet but also disruptive celebration.
0:49.4	So given that, I want to talk about the interplay of how memory, both in terms of our memory of
0:59.0	scripture, our memory of our own experience of this particular glorious holiday, how it plays
1:07.0	out in shaping our entry, not only into the day, but into what the incarnation brings.
1:15.5	And that is a revolution.
1:18.3	So start with, what was, what do you remember as to, in one sense, the good, the lovely, the difficult, the complex, maybe even the ugly with regard to you and your own experience, particularly as a kid, your encounter?
1:40.7	Yeah. Gosh, I mean, so I was raised in a Christian home, so there was certainly an element of Christmas that was celebrating the birth of Jesus.
1:53.0	And I always loved the songs and the candles and this sense of wonder.
2:00.3	Like, I was a kid who was very full of wonder,
2:04.9	even in the midst of trauma, even in the midst of chaos,
2:07.9	even in the midst of heartache.
2:11.4	I think that's actually true for a lot of kids who know,
2:16.7	like, the depths of danger,
	...

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