This is my favorite time of year. Many of you know that already—I’ve said it often. I love Thanksgiving and Christmas. I always have.
As a kid, the anticipation was almost too much to bear. I’d sneak out of my room multiple times Christmas Eve, hoping for a peek at the living room. Everything—from the mall music to the decorations to the choir programs—fed this excitement that built to a crescendo on Christmas morning.
I loved watching loved ones open gifts I had picked for them just as much as I loved opening my own. The generosity. The food at my grandparents’ house. The warmth. I loved all of it.
But adulthood… adulthood has a way of speeding everything up, especially this time of year.
We race.
We hustle.
We sprint through our days.
Buying gifts. Attending programs. Going to parties. Transforming our homes. Visiting family we never see the rest of the year. Then add the end-of-year business pressures—sales goals, leadership responsibilities, retail demands, church commitments.
Suddenly it’s Christmas Eve, and the excitement we once felt has been replaced by a sense that we aren’t squeezing the most out of this season.
Yesterday, I realized something:
I’m about to miss my favorite time of the year.
Not because anything is wrong…
but because I’ve been worried about numbers and schedules and expectations and decorating—all things I never thought about when I was younger and soaked in the dripping excitement of it all.
Now it can feel like it’s all on me.
And social media doesn’t help. It promises productivity, but it only multiplies distraction.
So if you’re like me—if you feel like more and more plates have been added to all the ones you’re already spinning—I want to ask you to do something.
Are you ready?
Let them drop.
Just stop.
Pause.
Take the risk, even if you’re afraid everything will come crashing down. Almost miraculously, I believe nothing truly important will break.
Here’s why:
If you’re receiving this email and reading this far, I know something true about you—Jesus, discipleship, and the Gospel matter deeply to you. The love you feel for this season is tied to the wonder of Jesus’ birth. And you desire—earnestly—to pass that love on to your children.
If that’s the case, anything that “breaks” when you pause… wasn’t essential to your calling. That crash you thought you heard? It was noise, not signal.
And when you pause, be with your children.
Create a new tradition or reawaken one you’ve let slip.
Kent and Barbara Hughes, in Disciplines of a Godly Family, encourage families to build celebrations and traditions that solidify truth. These become remembrances—markers that reinforce what we’ve been cultivating all year.
Put another way:
Traditions are seeds.
Seeds we plant repeatedly—watering, nurturing, and tending in hopes they bear spiritual fruit in our children.
What you nurture through the year deserves a celebration in this season.
Traditions draw families close. They strengthen identity. They deepen shared history.
But to do any of this, you must pause.
To pause is to remember.
To remember is to be grateful.
And you cannot be grateful without seeing grace.
Goodness that has been done to you.
This is exactly what we covered in our recent Thanksgiving series inside TTD365.
In our home, we have simple traditions:
A candle, pieces of corn, and a moment of gratitude.
A tree decorated with the names of Jesus.
Pajamas and laughter as we hang the homemade ornaments from years gone by.
These celebrations aren’t complicated. They aren’t productions. They’re pauses—small, meaningful moments.
Every family needs traditions that rally joy and strengthen identity. But the hardest part isn’t doing them—it’s stopping long enough to begin.
This is who we are as parents who follow Jesus—we choose presence over pressure, remembrance over rushing, formation over frenzy.
So tonight, I’m urging you:
Pause.
Look at the people God has entrusted to you.
Celebrate something.
Start a simple tradition.
Return to one you’ve let slip.
And if you need help getting started, here’s a simple tradition our family has loved—something you can begin this week. Nothing fancy. Nothing overwhelming. Just a pause that points your family back to Jesus:
The Names of Jesus Ornament Tradition
Choose one name of Jesus each night (Emmanuel, Shepherd, Light of the World).
Write it on a simple piece of paper or ornament.
Hang it on the tree and talk for a few minutes about what it means. (Leslie created a simple printable to make this even easier for you. Click here to download that now.)
That tradition doesn’t require planning or perfection.
It just requires a pause.
And that pause may be exactly what helps your children see Jesus more clearly this season.
I’m praying that this is the year you don’t miss the beauty of the moment God is giving your family—because you chose to stop long enough to see it.
