Episode 348: Chris Marchand and Celebrating the 12 Days of Christmas

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Thanks for having me here. It's an honor and a pleasure.

Well, I'm so glad we had the chance to do this, and we almost missed our window. We had been talking about this for some time, and then as Christmas and Advent are coming upon us, and by the time that people are listening to this podcast, we're actually going to be right in the midst of the Advent season, and I had so many guests ready to go and I thought, you know what, if we don't do it now, we're going to miss the window. So I'm so glad that you were able to take some time and squeeze it in here for Voices in My Head today. It's an excellent book and I can't wait to talk about it with you.

Oh yeah, you're welcome. Well, you know, I'm a church minister and that's part of the problem is getting into this busy season. It's where does the time go? It's just every day there's just something else to tackle with Advent and Christmas. So yes, it's great to squeeze it in, so thank you.

Well, it's my pleasure. Pleasure to have you here today. And once again, just so everybody knows, the title of the book is Celebrating the Twelve Days of Christmas. And I understand that in a way we owe a debt of gratitude to one of my new friends, Fernando Ortega, for this book being written. Tell us how he ties in with the writing of Celebrating the Twelve Days of Christmas.

Yeah, well, you know, I still laugh about it myself. A number of years ago, this would have been 2011. Fernando had a new album out. It was Come Down, O Love Divine. And this— I was, I was about a couple of years out from being in seminary, and I just thought, you know, do I pick up the blog? Even back then, blogs were just cliché. It was just like, you know, another person starting another blog, trying to, trying to get their scope of people's attentions, a little slice, you know, a little sliver. And Fernando, at the same time, was releasing some blog articles, and on a whim I just thought, you know, I'd love to interview him. And I formulated out some interview questions and I put it as a comment on his blog, one of his articles. And to my surprise, within the comments himself, he responded. And he took some time and he, you know, it was really thoughtful. And I was just blown away by it. And so from there, I turned it into a real interview. I thought, well, I'm not letting this go. And so I put it as a I published the blog article then on my own blog as an interview. And from there, I went to a concert locally here in Illinois and he announced me from the stage and said, "Hey, there's a guy here." That's cool. It was just astounding. I was so surprised. And kind of just through there, it was just his random encouragement that I thought, "Okay, I think I'm going to try to do this. I'm going to write some more. I'm going to interview." And it just kind of kept snowballing from there. And so I think his encouragement got me to this place where I thought, hey, I think I can write a book. I want to write a book.

Hmm. Well, that's terrific. I'm glad that you did. And Fernando was on this show a few weeks ago. I can't remember how long ago it was, but man, I really enjoyed just speaking with him. What a great thinker as well as a great musician and just has such a big heart for God. So I'm glad that you two crossed paths and really I can thank him, I guess, for kind of helping set this book in motion. So that's awesome. What, you know, fairly early in the book you provide an initial warning. It says, "Do not put this book into practice by yourself." And I'd love for you to explain why that warning is so important when going into this book.

Well, I think, as I'll speak for myself, I'm an American, I live in the United States. I think We all have this innate tendency to want to just do things on our own and to think we can just spearhead things on our own. We have good ideas and we're good at being lone wolves in America. And so my initial warning was, or it was more of an encouragement actually, to say, hey, if you're gonna do this Christmas thing in a different way, find a community to do it with, whether it's your own immediate family, it's a church small group, it's a school, it's just a circle of friends, it's your own church, whatever it happens to be, to make it as communal as possible. And I'll say this, I kind of struggle with that because I'm more of an introvert myself. I know I'm talking on an interview, so people always think I'm very extroverted, but when it comes down to it, I like to spend time in quiet and solitude a lot. But even then, I think there are ways for people like myself to make our Christmases, to make our spiritual practices part of our community and to bond with others while we do it. So that was my encouragement. I just— my hope was that people would find a way that they would do it together, that they would do this Christmas thing together.

Well, that's great, and I definitely recommend that. And I feel that same way, actually. I could, you know, that shirt that I saw a while back, you know, introverts unite by ourselves in our homes or something like that. I do feel that way. And even though I'm always talking to people on the podcast and I'm always out playing concerts or leading worship music. I do, I definitely feel that pull of wanting to get away by yourself. But, but it is so important that we come together and understand that this holy season really is about worship when it all comes down to it. And that is something that we must learn to do together. And culturally, there's a misunderstanding just even about when the Christmas season is. And this is one reason that I think we need things like the church because we wouldn't find these things out on our own. And there's a rich tradition, several rich traditions actually, that you write about in this book. Let's start just right there. When does the Christmas season actually take place? Because most of our listeners probably are listening to this and thinking, well, duh, after Thanksgiving up until Christmas Day. But that's not correct, is it?

That's right. So there's a couple of ways of looking at this, but for the sake of simplicity, let's say this. The first day of Christmas is December 25th. So we wake up on the morning of Christmas morning and that is day 1. And it goes until January 5th. And so the 12th day is January 5th. And so what we— so there's that, there's this little festival called Twelfth Night, and that would be on January 5th. Where it gets maybe just slightly more confusing is many people render the evening as the start of the next day. So around 5 PM or something along there, depending on when the sun goes down, is when the next day begins. And so in some ways, Christmas begins on December 24th, even though it's Christmas Eve. But there you go. I think that as you were pointing out in your question, the important thing to remember is the 25th is the first day, and it's not the days leading up to the 25th. So it's not the— it's not from the middle of December to the 25th. Christmas doesn't end on December 25th, but it actually begins. So yeah, it's amazing. I've talked to a lot of people and they, they don't know about that. So yeah, thanks for bringing that up and clarifying it.

Well, I think it's important, and I do think it's for the most part lost on our culture that everybody pretty much whenever the 25th gets here, well, take down the lights, toss out the tree, it's done, you know. And there's actually a lot of rich celebration that can be had, which is one thing I really appreciated about reading your book. And you know, I was fascinated— and by the way, it's hard to know because there's so much good information in your book, it's hard to know which talking points to connect with— but there's things that just were fascinating to me that I want to talk about. So I'm just gonna try to, tonight, as we talk together, just try to throw out some things that I found really interesting. I want people to read your book, but these are just some things that I found fascinating. So if you don't mind, let's talk about the connection that exists between Christmas and Halloween, because I think our listeners would be interested in finding out about that, because we don't often associate those two holidays as having any similarities. But you do point out that for a while they were celebrated together.

Yeah, so I think there's two things that are fascinating about Halloween and Christmas, or at least an older way of celebrating Christmas. And so the first is that— let's dwell more on the side of beliefs first, which is, which is we associate Halloween as a time of perhaps darkness, of when the spiritual realm comes close to us in the physical realm. And we might conceive of that in different ways, um, you know, souls of the lost or souls of the dead, or maybe spirits and demons, or maybe monsters. Uh, and so I think what was really surprising as I began to research was that Christmas was conceived of as the same thing. It's the darkest night of the year in the northern hemisphere, and so many people saw the spiritual realm as being— the veil between heaven and earth was incredibly thin at this time of year. It was the darkest night. Strangely enough, there's this conception that the sun was dying, and we can almost imagine people waiting, "Will the sun come back again?" because they were kind of stuck in this seemingly eternal darkness up in the northern hemisphere, way, way up there, let's say, in some of these Nordic countries maybe. Anyway, so yeah, that was really strange to me. I didn't realize, and I have some friends from the Czech Republic who really told me about this, that there's this belief in the spiritual realm having to do with Christmas and where it relates really Halloween is there were many, many traditions that, that resemble the trick-or-treating that we're used to. And, uh, so in many cultures there were people that would go door to door around on Christmas or around Christmas and, uh, you know, do something really, really similar to trick-or-treating. And it wasn't quite the same, but boy, it looked— it's pretty much the same ritual.

Hmm. That's, that's fascinating, isn't it? Um, well, and you know, it's interesting when you were writing in the book too, because I don't remember actually right now, uh, if it was in the section where you were talking about Halloween or if it was a little bit later in the book, but I got thinking about, well, it kind of makes sense why like Dickens' Christmas Carol is, you know, a ghost story as much as it is a, a Christmas story, you know. And, and do you think that Dickens, when he wrote his story, do you think he kind of had those sort of Halloween-y Christmas connections in mind? Possibly?

Yes, very much so. And so that's another thing. And there's actually this publisher, I can't remember the name of the publisher at the moment, but in recent years they've produced multiple volumes and they just dubbed them Victorian Christmas Ghost Stories. Hmm. And, and so they're all these short stories that appeared in different periodicals and short story collections in the 1800s. And so A Christmas Carol is, is a it's in a certain genre. And it's that genre of kind of a Christmas ghost story. And you know, here's what's so fascinating about this to me is like growing up, I grew up very conservative Christian and didn't really watch any horror films or anything like that.

Sure.

And so it's really funny for me to think of, you know, these good Christian people and Christian countries in Europe in the 1800s just trying to scare each other. Yeah. Frighten each other to death on Christmas. And it's just kind of funny because I would have never thought that would have been an actual tradition, you know, because we think of this jovial, you know, kind elf that visits us and it's family and it's warmth around the fire. But here they are telling each other scary stories. I just love the irony of that.

Well, you know, I've always wondered about that line too. I think it's in the song The Most Wonderful Time of the Year, the Christmas song that It said, you know, there'll be, there'll be something. There's a line in it about there'll be scary ghost stories and tales of the glory of, you know, Christmases long, long ago. And it makes sense now as I'm, as I'm hearing, you know, you explaining some of these things. Because the only ghost story I could think of when I would hear those lyrics was like, well, they must be talking about like Dickens. But I, you know, I actually just made a note of that when you said that about these Victorian Christmas ghost stories, because I'd like to look that book up and find out more. Fascinating.

Yeah. And in my book, there's a reference to— I think it's a Smithsonian Magazine article where it talks about people wanting to bring back Christmas ghost stories. So it kind of gives a little synopsis of the tradition there.

Well, and I think I can see that even some in the mainstream. I mean, in the last few years we've had movies like Krampus, you know, come out, or I think this year there's a remake of Black Christmas, you know, things like that that we don't associate always with, you know, the holiday, but apparently it's it's something that is out there and is on people's minds. So, well, let's, let's move on a bit more. And I don't want to be too much of like a teaching podcast tonight, but there's— I don't want to leave people behind either. And you write this in the book, and I'm just gonna, if you don't mind, read just a very short passage from your book that I found helpful because I want us to talk about the distinctions between Advent, Christmas, and Epiphany. You say this, you say, it's up to us to imagine, brainstorm, and discern 'How to Weave the Stories and Themes of Advent, Christmas, and Epiphany Together into a Compelling Series of Gathered Worship, Jubilant Celebrations, and Selfless Service.' So for those who are listening who might not be familiar, would you mind walking our listeners through what Advent, Christmas, and Epiphany are and how they are different from each other?

Right, so let me say this as a little precursor. So as a guy that wrote a book on the 12 Days of Christmas, I'm also advocating for the season of Advent. And a lot of the people that I grew up going to church with, evangelicals, charismatic Pentecostal people, non-denominational people, uh, Advent really, it's just not a concept. It's not a tradition that people are well aware of. And so one of the things I have to be really careful of is coming across as a church calendar curmudgeon, right? Right. And where I kind of, you know, I get on my high horse and I go, "Oh, it's not even Christmas yet." I become a Scrooge.

I've been there, by the way, so I understand.

I've been there too. It's really tough because what happened was, part of my journey is becoming Anglican in the Church of England, and the church that we went up to around Chicago, they did Advent in such a lovely, meaningful, impactful way. And, um, and so since then I've been wanting to be an advocate for Advent. And, and so I, you know, I think I, I myself, you know, uh, you're— I, I don't— I guess I'll plug your own podcast, but, um, your, your Mr. Rogers podcast, you know, like he's a, he's a lesson in learning how to communicate what's important to others. And, and so I'm in the midst of that, right? I'm learning how to communicate that. That's— so that's, that's my precursor to your question.

Sure.

But Advent, simply put, is the time of preparation, the time of longing before Christ comes. And traditionally Advent has had two focuses, which are Christ's dual comings, Christ's dual arrivals, namely his, you know, his birth in Bethlehem to Mary, and also his second coming when he comes again and he reigns in glory. And so traditionally Christians have always held those two things in tension.. And so for, you know, for instance, in my church, our scripture readings during Advent are— they are definitely many scriptures leading up to Christ's birth. Yeah, you know, prophecies that are specifically about this, uh, saving one, this anointed one that is coming to save his people. However, they also then hint at— and many of these come— my favorite ones tend to be in Isaiah, where It's apparent that the scriptures are pointing to the end of all time when the final judgment will take place. And so there's this kind of this dual tension between those Christ's first coming and second coming. And so that's Advent. And what happens then when we get to Christmas is now we fall down and worship before our King. You know, our King has come, our Savior has come. And in some ways that's the easiest one because people are they tend to already be there.

They get that.

The harder part though is linking that to Epiphany, which again is another new concept for a whole lot of people. Epiphany occurs on January 6th, which would technically be the 13th day of Christmas, the day after January 5th, the Twelfth Night. But what's so important about Epiphany is first this: I love taking people through the journey of of the story of Christ's birth. So we don't have the wise men on Christ's birth, we wait. And then once the 12 days are over, the wise men come. And what's so important about that is it is the first major signal that Christ isn't just for the nation of Israel, they're not just for Jewish people, that he has come to be the Savior for all. And the wise men, the wise men shouldn't be there in a sense. They're not authorized. No, they didn't pass merit because they're not of the nation of Israel. And yet they come and they worship. They bow down, they give their gifts, they proclaim him king. And there's something about that as a Gentile, a Gentile myself, I don't belong in the nation of Israel. I'm not of God's people in that sense. And yet I've been given grace. I've been brought before his throne. And so I just love telling the beauty of that story. I guess it's important. It's, it's important to link the longing and the preparation of Advent with the rejoicing of his birth, with the grace given at Epiphany that we can all fall before him and call him our Savior.

Yeah, well, thank you for explaining that to our listeners in case anyone didn't, didn't know that. I do think it helps us to, to order our lives, especially our lives as believers. I'm always trying to help our people understand around starting with Advent each year that, you know, we have this kind of secular Hallmark calendar that most of us live by, but we actually are formed and shaped in our Christian walk by this liturgical calendar as well, this holy calendar that is so unique to the church. And so I love the way that you write about that more and sort of the rhythms and the flows of the seasons. And as you said, even though this is a book book that's titled The Twelve Days of Christmas, you do a great job sort of giving an overview of the other seasons that are leading into it, and I really appreciate that about the book. Well, we may have some parents listening to this broadcast. I know we have several parents that listen in, but they might be thinking, as Christians, what are we to do with Santa Claus? And, and you write quite a bit about this in the, in the book. And what do you tend to do with Santa in your home? And what recommendations maybe do you have for parents who want to be faithful to the true spirit of the season but also maybe want to have Santa around?

Yeah, that's— it's such an interesting conundrum. It really is. It's still something I think about. And, and the reason I still feel the tension is because I know people in my own life, uh, who both love Santa and just do the whole thing up, you know. They, they try to convince their kids of Santa's reality. Sorry, if kids are listening, please have your children turn off from it. You should have a warning.

And all of a sudden there are book burnings of Chris Marchand across the— no, sorry, spoiler alert.

Yeah, I don't mean to spoil anyone's children's Christmas, um, but I— all that is to say is I have people that I know that do the Santa thing, and then I have people that are really, really truly against it, uh, for, for all of their reasons, uh, paganism, the, the, you know the guilt or whatever it happens to be. In the book, in some ways I say this is up to Christian freedom, and so I do give a decent amount of freedom. However, one thing I really warn against is this use of Santa Claus as an arbiter of divine judgment.

Yes, I really appreciated that. Please go on more about that.

Yeah, well, it's a bit strange because what happens is Santa ends up becoming this lowercase g god that is watching our children for us. And one book that I read, they rendered it as a kind of a yearly Judgment Day for children. And it's a way of keeping a reminder in front of the kids to be good little boys and girls. And what I don't like about that is it's— that's just really not scriptural. That's just not in line with our faith. And that God is our judge. God is the one, you know, who gives us forgiveness. He's the one that gives us salvation. And, you know, so we shouldn't be talking in terms of, you know, this creature— this not— he's not a creature, but this guy, this elf, however we render Santa Claus, as watching over us. That just doesn't sit well with me. And that's where I would say when people say that, you know, Christmas has these pagan roots, that's one instance where it's like, yeah, yeah, actually, if we're gonna do that with our kids, then in a sense we are behaving in that pagan way where the god is watching and waiting over us to jump on us if we do something wrong. So I really recommend against that. At the same time, because I can never, I can never just make something simple, I tend to not see things in in black and white where it's just these polar opposites, but life is pretty complex. And so I do say, but listen, mythology is part of our lives. Fantasy, fairy tales is part of our lives. We don't have to be threatened by it, and we can tell kids stories. Kids enjoy stories, and we can just— we can let that be what it is. My— I have a 6-year-old my oldest is 10, and my 10 and my 8-year-old, they, they're past it. But my 6-year-old, he kind of wavers. There are times, and I can tell maybe some of his classmates at school, they believe in Santa, where I think he wants to believe. And so I can, over the past year, I've seen him go back and forth, even though in our own family we don't, we don't tell the Santa story as if it's true. We've never told them that Santa gives them presents. So, so, you know, again, you know, little kids want to believe it. And so that, you know, again, that's— I'm gonna leave that up to families about what you want to do about that. Just, you know, to sum up, one of the things that we do talk about is Saint Nicholas. And so we haven't yet quite dived into Saint Nicholas's Day, which is December 6th, but that's one way to really talk about Santa, which is to talk about the real bishop who is a bishop in what is modern-day Turkey, and just his own life and his, you know, some of the stories. We don't exactly know if they're true, but they are the stories that have built up around him. And he was generous. That's basically what he was known as, and he did give gifts according to the stories. So that's one thing that people can do if you're not comfortable with Santa. You could just talk about the real Saint Nicholas that lived in the 300s. Mm-hmm.

Yeah, no, that's good stuff, you know. And of course, I love how you talk about in the book too, one of my favorite probably apocryphal stories about Saint Nicholas, you know, when he punches out Arius at the Council of Nicaea, you know. And, you know, and you do some distinctions even in the book about, you know, that's not the same thing as Santa Claus. And I like how you, you know, kind of stretch us to look in a bit more into these actual, you know, real people who were around. But I also like how in the book you write about a trap that we often fall into. And while we're kind of on that subject right now, of trying to decide between like either the secular or the sacred. And you write, you say, I would like to offer us the opportunity not to get caught in this trap, but instead to allow us the freedom to embrace the secular along with the sacred aspects of the holiday. And, and you do a great job elaborating on that in the book. Can you go on just a little bit more about that and the idea that we, we do have some freedom as we do celebrate these sacred things together, that, that it's okay to have some fun and to embrace, you know, some of these other stories along the way as well too.

Yeah, I really appreciate you asking that, and I'm gonna first answer that by talking about some of the controversies within Christmas history. And I'm not gonna talk about the modern-day war on Christmas, so to speak.

Thank you.

Yeah, thank you. But you know, one of the funny things about looking at the modern-day war on Christmas is to look back over history and seeing some of the true wars over Christmas, because there, there were certain times within American history, within European, especially British history, where Christmas was banned. And one of the main reasons it was banned was that people were getting out of control and there was too much revelry, and there was things happening that, you know, good Christian people didn't want to see happening in their community. And so they just like, let's let's just get rid of this. This is unholy. One of the ways that I would put it is in many ways Christmas resembled what we would conceive of as Mardi Gras or Carnival.

Sure.

And so it was bawdy, it was licentious, to use some of those kind of, you know, bigger words. So here's what I would say, you know, the pendulum always tends to swing, right? We go hedonism to Puritanism. And I think what I was trying to advocate for in my book was, yeah, it was the quote that you said, which is that as followers of Christ, we, we can do both, and we can truly enjoy each other. We can throw really fun Christmas parties. You know, one of the things I mentioned for, let's say, for New Year's, it's, it's pretty traditional to have a a big New Year's ball, like a dance party or a huge game party for people just to get together and to just enjoy letting loose and enjoy each other's presence. However, there is a tradition within African American congregations, especially within the Methodist Church or the African Methodist Episcopal Church, where they have Watch Night parties. And it— I would say that their parties are not parties, not Watch Night services. I would say they say their services are very similar to making New Year's resolutions, except they do it in a holy way. And so, they'll have these long prayer services on New Year's Eve and they'll pledge themselves for the coming year like, "God, this is what I want my year to be like." And they kind of set these goals in a form of prayer. And so, I think there are ways that we can find rhythms in our season where both of those things live together. Where we're having some fun, uh, whatever that looks like for us, and then we find ourselves just devoted, devoted in prayer, you know, worshiping. And, uh, I don't think they have to be separate. I think, again, the pendulum swings, and it's really easy to go off on one side or the other. We're just going to be— we're just going to have a fun Christmas, or we're just going to have a holy Christmas.

But I think it plays in the, the most into our human nature to embrace both of those and to let them live in Yeah, well, I appreciate you writing about that because I do think maybe at times we even have guilt, you know, about trying to figure out how to, uh, to celebrate one and should I leave out the other. And, and no, it— and it really is— you, you really help us in the book kind of, um, again draw everything back around to our worship as Christians and trying to help us understand that, you know, everything— as long as we keep everything in the context of, of we are believers and, and we understand that we are a people who serve a holy God, and that there is much freedom in him. And actually, this, this can be a part of the fun and the celebration, and we don't have to be such sticks in the mud at times. You know, it really is this, this celebration that's going on. Well, you know, as we're talking here, and I feel like there's just so much that we could be speaking about, and I want to give a couple of overviews— not even overviews, I just want to let people know what's in the book, because you do have a lot of great suggestions about how to celebrate the 12 Days of Christmas and getting into feast days and things like that. But we're going to run out of time before we have time to talk about everything. But I was really interested in the way that you talked about the traditions of, you know, traditionally there have been 4 Masses or liturgies associated with the coming of Christ and different types of services that are there. And there's a couple of different great topic headings that you have in the book, which shows not only your scholarship but also the humor that you have. And one is about gift giving and And the heading is How to Ruin Christmas for Everyone, or Isn't There Another Way to Give Gifts? And you offer a couple of really great suggestions when it comes to gift giving. And I don't want you to give up too much of the book because I do want people to read it for themselves.

But maybe just give us one or two ideas of ways that maybe we could do gift giving in a way that is maybe a little more holy and a little more honoring to our Savior in this time of Yeah, so I'm currently finishing up probably my favorite book on this subject, and it's called The Battle for Christmas, and it's by this historian named Stephen Nissenbaum, and he details in there the progression of modern-day Christmas as we know it, which basically started in the, you know, early 1800s, and that's where we get our modern conception of Christmas trees and of Santa Claus Santa Claus, but then he has this really great chapter on gift giving. What was fascinating to read was how much the people back then, which I know it wasn't that long ago, a couple hundred years, but how much they were struggling with gift giving too because they were just as disturbed as we are by all the consumerism. You have to remember just as that was happening, all of these things were coming, emerging in tandem. And so industrialized production, the ability to buy more things in shops, was coming about right at the same time as Christmas was changing. And so what we find is there was always this pressure to up ourselves every year for our kids. That we— that, you know, the kids have— they bring this expectation of gifts, and then the parents Well, it's got to be better next year, right? So I think it's really tough. This is a really tough thing, especially now in 2019 heading into 2020. There's just everything at our disposal. And so to your question, some of the options that I give are— I like to give people options. And you say, you mentioned the humor. The way that we— you could just literally ruin Christmas for everybody is to to, let's say you only give handmade presents. Now that would actually be really special. I think that would be really, really nice. But I know that my boys, they're 10, 8, and 6. If I only got them quilts for Christmas this year, like Christmas would be ruined.

Right, exactly.

Yeah. Well, sons, you know. Mommy and Daddy made you these quilts and here you go, or whatever. Maybe it would be socks. We would hand make some socks for them. That's at least really practical, but man, they would hate us. So I talk about doing a mixture where we do— Of course, for my sons, they've already told me a video game they want. They've told me a set of Legos that they want. My other son, he wants an art set, which is great. I mean, I was happy that he wanted an art set and not just another superhero thing. So yes, I say, "Okay, if we're going to buy stuff, that's fine, but let's try to think of ways where we do make things for each other." And I think that will look different from family to family. One of the things I mentioned is my brother-in-law one year made me a set of coasters that he lacquered up the center circle of an old vinyl record from Goodwill, so it wasn't like a valuable thing, but he turned them into coasters. You know, like, I was not expecting that. Like, that would have been the last thing. But I don't know how he thought of it, but when he gave that to me, I was like blown away just of how cool that was that he fashioned that and took time to do that. So I, so I do encourage us to give those kind of options to each other. The other thing, and this kind of plays into the 12 days itself, because one of the ideas is like Jewish people do with Hanukkah, which is to give gifts throughout the duration of the 12 days. You can give people experiences. That can come in the form of a handwritten or printed-off coupon. You could say, "Well, it's day number 6 and guess what? Today is movie day." Day 7, it's bowling day. Day 8 is we're going to go, who knows, maybe go visit Grandma or maybe it's Grandma's day and Grandma will take them out. If we are concerned about just the mass amount of gifts, lining our— under, under the tree and then now sprawled out across our houses. We can, we can think of more creative ways to give gifts to each other.

Yeah, I love that. Well, thanks for sharing that. Well, you know, I would be remiss if— there's so much good stuff in the book. I mean, it's almost encyclopedic in some ways because you've done so much research, so we just can't get into everything. So please, listeners, you need to buy this book, and we're going to talk more about where you can get it at the end. But there's one more thing I really wanted to make sure that that we talked about, because there are some places in the book where you talk about some strange traditions, and, and I— and some of them are kind of funny, and I just want to give listeners a taste of what they will find in the book beyond just the 12 days, but some of these odd traditions that have gone on through the years. And again, it's another one of my favorite, like, headings of a section of the book, but it says, "It's not Christmas until everyone gets their beating." And I wonder if you could talk just a little bit more about that particular tradition.

Well, so, right, um, it was, it was just like, uh, it was a surprise to learn about the, the spiritual, uh, demonic stuff with Christmas. It was really surprising to learn about people hitting each other, or of parents hitting their children on Christmas.

Wow.

Or sometime during the 12 days. And it always seemed to be sticks or birch rods, or, uh, and, and Another aspect of this is how much superstitions played into people's beliefs. So, for example, I think this would have been, if I'm remembering right, which would be the Holy Innocents' Day, which is December 28th, when we remember the children of Bethlehem who were killed by Herod. There was a tradition where the last person out of bed in the morning would get a beating.

Wow.

So it's like, and I do mention in there, because history is a bit murky at times. Sometimes it seems like these were just kind of playful things. And then sometimes it's like, nah, they were actually hitting each other. There was this one tradition, I can't quite remember it, but I think it was in Ireland where young women would go around and torment young ladies until they drew blood.

Oh my.

And yeah, yeah, it's just, again, you know, good Christian people, right?

Right, exactly.

Exactly.

Well, you know, it's— and I kind of, in asking the question, I was finding the humor in it. But as I'm thinking about it, I was like, yeah, that's not really that funny either, though. That's kind of like if we're actually drawing blood and hurting people. But they are interesting things to read about. So we hope that you won't make a Christmas beating a part of your celebration this year. But you can definitely find out more about it in the pages of Celebrating the Twelve Days of Christmas. As we start wrapping up our conversation together, I just I just wonder, what are you hoping more than anything else that readers will take away from your book?

Wow, yeah. I do have some big ideas, some big hopes for what this book provides us, and a lot of it would involve some cultural shifting. And it's tough to do that because we live in a day and age where people really only have a certain set amount of vacation time every year. You know, many people who work industry jobs or retail jobs or healthcare jobs, I mean, they're just given only a certain amount of days off, right? Uh, and so it's really tough. But one of the things that I would advocate for is a longer season of rest in midwinter. And, uh, for those of us in the church, uh, I would be advocating for, uh, you know, to have times of fun, celebration, and revelry that I, that we mentioned earlier, to be able to have time to just go to church and seek God and rejoice and sing together. And then to just have time to lay around and be leisurely and to just enjoy the time off. So I really would like us to do that. And actually, you know, I would be remiss if I didn't mention the fourth aspect of that, which is acts of service. I think that's a really important— it's historical, it's traditional, but to to serve others and to give of ourselves during Christmas. And, uh, quite honestly, we often think of charity. We think of, okay, I'm gonna, I'm gonna give some money, or I'm gonna give some canned goods to a local ministry or nonprofit. And that's, that's all well and good, but I think there's also a way to personalize it, to be the eyes and ears and hands and feet in our community, and to see the people that maybe they just— we just need to invite them over for supper a couple of times during the holidays. To give them presence and to give them a place of safety and warmth and to feel like they're part of a community. Or vice versa, there's people in our churches that can't make it out or they're in nursing homes and to visit them and to spend a good time with them, to bring the worship, to bring the partying to them. And so again, that harkens back to your initial question, which is to not do it alone. And so yeah, I would have that hope— here's the paradox. I'm giving us a lot of things to do during Christmas, and I say over and over again, I don't want us to just make Christmas more busy than it already is. And I'm writing this, I feel the weight of that as I'm writing because I know I'm listing off thing after thing after thing that we can do. My hope is that we learn how to strike the balance so that when we're done with Christmas we do feel refreshed. We do feel like we've truly had a great time with each other, and, and we've been drawn close to God as well, and we're rejoicing in our Savior.

Yeah, well, and I think that comes through very well in, in the pages of this book. Well, again, the, the name of the book, it's called Celebrating the Twelve Days of Christmas: A Guide for Churches and Families, and it's written by my guest today, Chris Marchand, and that's spelled M-A-R-C-H-A-N-D. M-A-R-C-H-A-N-D. And tell the listeners real quick where they can find out more about you online and how they can get the book.

Yeah, so I've had a blog for several, several years. It's called postconsumerreports.com, so you can find a lot of my writings already on there. And it's— I have a podcast as well. And, you know, I have an author page on Amazon, an author page on Facebook, Chris Marchand. If you look me up, hopefully there's not too many other Chris Marchands in the world. The book is available, as you said, it's available on Amazon, it's on Christian Book Distributors and Barnes Noble, and my publisher is Wipf Stock, W-I-P-F and then Stock. And so it's available in all the typical places you can get books, and I haven't tried it out, but I hear there's an ebook as well.

Alright. Well, I tried out the one you sent me and it worked nicely, so that's great. And just to let listeners know, as always, we're going to have links to the book on this webpage at Voice voicesinmyheadpodcast.com. So if you go there, if all else fails, go to our website and we'll make sure and have a link to the book. Well, that'll take you right to where you can get it. But it's been great having you here today, Chris, and I really want to just commend you because I know how hard it is to write a book, and you have done such a great job of researching it and providing a true gift to the church. And I use that pun intended with Christmas being here for us. But it, but it's a, it is, it's a, it's a valuable resource. And I think, I'm not sure, I think I might be the first Goodreads review that went up. I just did it a little while ago. So you'll have to—

so, so that's the, that's the hard thing about, you know, I mean, you're an independent musician, right? You would call yourself independent, right? And so you kind of have to do things on your own and figure things out. And so that's one of the things they've told me is, yeah, you know, you have to have people write reviews on Amazon, on Goodreads. And so thank you, Rick, I do appreciate that.

Well, you know, I looked and I know it's such a new book, and I thought, I wonder if I'll be the first, you know, and if it's so— and I think I will. I may be wrong, but anyway, if I am, I'll wear that as my badge of honor that I get to be the first one. But I do commend you on it. So, Chris Marchand, it's been a pleasure. Thank you for being one of the Voices in My Head this week.

Thank you.

Thank you for joining me here this week on Voices in My Head. I hope you'll visit me on my website at rickleejames.com where you can find out more about me, get my music on vinyl and CD, follow my blog, and even schedule me for your concert or speaking engagement. Better yet, even a book signing in your neighborhood. You can find all that and more at rickleejames.com. Also, it would mean a great deal to me if you could write a review of this podcast on iTunes. The more positive reviews that we receive, the more visible of this podcast will be online. And now for the benediction: May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing, so that by the power of the Holy Spirit you may abound in hope. God bless you, and thank you for listening to Voices in My Head. This is Rick Lee James and the music you are hearing is from my new album, Thunder. The title track, Thunder, is a never-before-released song by the late Rich Mullins. There are also 12 other tracks made up of original music, hymns, and readings to guide the listener on a journey. You can buy Thunder today on clear vinyl and CD, or stream it on Spotify, Apple Music, and almost every other music streaming service. Thunder. Hear it today at rickleejames.com.