Real-Life Christmas: Marriage, Kids, and Navigating the Holiday Season

In this heartfelt episode of the Home and Marriage Podcast, Lennon and Christal Noland open up about their own family rhythms during the holidays and the joyful anticipation of Christmas. They share the traditions that anchor their home, like baking cranberry bread and celebrating “Christmas Eve Eve,” and how these simple rituals strengthen connection and create lasting memories.

Together, they offer practical wisdom for navigating the holiday season with peace—managing expectations, setting realistic budgets, and keeping family relationships healthy when things get busy. Most importantly, Lennon and Christal point listeners back to the true meaning of the season: celebrating the birth of Christ and letting His love shape every moment.

This episode invites you to embrace the beauty in imperfect traditions, cultivate a Christ-centered home, and make the holidays meaningful without stretching your sanity—or your budget.

Transcript

Lennon: 0:03

This is the Home and Marriage Podcast with Lennon and Christal Noland, where we help couples become better at home and stronger together. We're husband and wife, parents and ministers who want God's best for our home and for yours. Oh my gosh. Christal I hear it. Can you hear it? What? Santa Slay be's baby. Santa's coming to town. Is it too early for that? It's so early December, but as far as I'm concerned, Santa's on his way.

Christal: 0:33

It's not too early. Lennon to me, when it's December 1st, it's definitely time to celebrate Christmas.'cause Thanksgiving's behind us. We just had a great Thanksgiving with our family. We enjoyed lots of food. Like I know I gained some pounds.

Lennon: 0:48

I know I gained some pounds too because I stepped on the scale this morning. And let me tell you, that wasn't a great way to start the day. Yeah. You thought that was funny. I see. But it's true. You were sleeping like a baby and I was, uh, getting up to go to the gym and talk about motivation to go ahead and get out the door on a day that on a day this cold. I was like, my goodness, I gotta get back to it. So we did enjoy Thanksgiving. We went and spent time with my dad early in the week. Yeah, because it was your parents' year for us to eat at their house. So we had barbecue at my dad's house. Traditional stuff on Thanksgiving Day with your parents. It was great being with everybody.

Christal: 1:24

Yeah. Hey, what was your favorite Thanksgiving food this year?

Lennon: 1:28

I think my favorite Thanksgiving food this year was my dad's ribs. Honestly,

Christal: 1:33

not even, not even the actual Thanksgiving food, but the mm-hmm.

Lennon: 1:38

On on Thanksgiving day though. I mean, the classic stuff, the mashed potatoes, the eade, the garlic mashed potatoes, the gravy. I kind of like to mix the stuff together. My plate is kind of gross, but the hodgepodge of all the basics, the mashed potatoes, the stuffing, the Turkey. I love it all.

Christal: 1:56

My favorite was our cranberry bread. We do cranberry bread every year since the kids we're little because we read this book called Cranberry Thanksgiving.

Lennon: 2:07

Yep.

Christal: 2:07

And the back of it has the actual recipe for a good cranberry bread, which was in the story Moms, if you. Have little ones, please get this book. It's such a cute book and I love it because it was all about like sharing what you have with others and it just has a sweet meaning. But anyways, that's my favorite. I love good cranberry bread, fresh from the oven with some coffee.

Lennon: 2:30

That was an unforeseen tradition that we developed. We're gonna talk a lot about traditions today. Yeah. But that Thanksgiving tradition of Thanksgiving morning. You know, you baking that bread. We would read the story to the kids. I remember when it finally came to an end where we sat down at the table and we opened the book and they were just too old for it. And they're like, mom, we don't wanna do this.

Christal: 2:51

I, this is one of those mom fail moments where I was trying to press an issue of we're gonna read this book. We're gonna get into this. And they're all like, mom, we're too old for this book. Please don't make us read it. Yeah. Yeah. I just had to come to terms with certain traditions are gonna age out. Yeah. And it's okay. Embrace the new move on. Right. And we, but we still do enjoy our cranberry bread. They beg for it every year. I will just say, yeah. It's one of the few baking things that I actually can do. So,

Lennon: 3:25

yeah, we had a great Thanksgiving. We're into Christmas, you know, we came into Thanksgiving with, our tree was up, most of the lights were on the exterior of the house. Mm-hmm. I like to come into, into Thanksgiving with a running start toward Christmas. We pulled that off and so you've gotta set up in full. Christmas mode. I, I don't even mind your pillow obsession around Christmas because the December pillows you pull out look fantastic. You've just done a great job with our home this year.

Christal: 3:53

Oh, thank you. I, I love the whole Christmas atmosphere in our home. I do think we need a couple more Christmas mugs to display though. I do. I do think that is something we're lacking.

Lennon: 4:06

For the love of the Lord Woman. We have enough mugs. Yeah, you're drinking outta a mug right now with Christmas trees and nutcrackers on it.

Christal: 4:14

Yeah, but this is actually our daughter's mug because I don't really have a good Christmas mug myself. Lennon, so that's one of the problems. I think I need my own Christmasy mug. That's mine.

Lennon: 4:27

Yeah. Well, we'll agree to disagree, so, but we got plenty of other. Christmas things that we hope to enjoy. Mm-hmm. Kind of like everybody. We're gonna talk about that today. Christmas is something that, for me, over time, has become a bigger deal to me than it was when we first got married.

Christal: 4:43

Yeah. I remember our very first Christmas together as a married couple. We were married for only three months so far. So we, everything was new and I was. So excited to get our little apartment set up for Christmas. We found a Christmas tree. Actually it was my parents' old Christmas tree that they were done with. I think we had to re stringing some lights on it. Yeah. To make sure it all lit up. But I couldn't wait to set that up. But the one thing I noticed about you is you just didn't seem that end of Christmas, and I came from a family that loves Christmas, and so that was really new for me.

Lennon: 5:21

Yeah, I was really a late comer to coming to love Christmas with the intensity that you do and maybe beyond the intensity you have for it now. Yeah. Uh, didn't have all of the same experiences that you had growing up, but being around you and how much you love it. And then of course, little kids coming into the picture. I am as much of a Christmas nut as anybody that I know, or anyone we can see in a movie that's a little too over the top about it.

Christal: 5:51

You're like a kid at Christmas. It's even funny to me how you will mourn Christmas before it's even over, but you will start to say it's true. You'll say like, oh, I can't believe that. Christmas is gonna be here in 25 days, and then it's gonna be so long until the next one. Like I, I think that's so funny. Yeah. How much you love it now. And I do think a lot of that is because of the, the special memories we've made over the years at Christmas time, the things we've done with the kids, having kids really brings. Christmas alive in a new way, so I think a lot of the things that we've done tradition wise has, has meant a lot for our family. What, what is something that you love? What's one of your favorite Christmas traditions that we do?

Lennon: 6:36

One of the things that I love most, it's not totally unique to us, but we do, you do the Christmas morning breakfast of monkey bread. Some people call it different things, but it's all the biscuits and a bunt cake pan together with syrup and brown sugar. We fry up a bunch of bacon.

Christal: 6:55

Yeah, lots of butter on that thing too.

Lennon: 6:57

Lots of butter. I eat a lot of that. And then drink a lot of coffee.

Christal: 7:02

Yes. Amen.

Lennon: 7:03

And we open presents with the kids. I look forward to that time so much. Mm-hmm. That is my favorite breakfast of the year, so that's my favorite. Yeah. What's, I love that. What's, what's your favorite tradition

Christal: 7:15

that we have? I think one of my favorite traditions is our Christmas Eve Eve night. Yes. We, and the reason we do something on Christmas Eve, Eve is usually Christmas Eve, we're at a, a service together at church, but Christmas Eve Eve is when we. As a family, gather around and watch the Christmas Carol, the Jim Carrey version, which is your favorite. My favorite. So good. We love it. And then we'll have hot cocoa or a special dessert. It's just a fun night. And when the kids were little, they used to on Christmas, Evie, sleep under the tree or near the tree, right? And so they would get out their pallets. Or their, their bedding. Yeah. And they would all sleep under that tree.

Lennon: 7:54

Our German Shepherd was so happy to have company for the night in the living room floor, and they kind of, they, they don't enjoy that as much anymore.

Christal: 8:04

No. They, they like the comfort of their beds and they like to actually wake up later. That's one of the beautiful things about teenagers in Christmas.

Lennon: 8:11

That's true. They

Christal: 8:12

don't come knocking on your door at 5:00 AM No, they're like, oh, can we please sleep till eight or nine? So. Or even later if they, if we let them, but

Lennon: 8:22

yeah.

Christal: 8:22

Yeah. Yes you can. It's

Lennon: 8:23

fun.

Christal: 8:24

So that's our favorite traditions. Why do you feel like traditions are important for a family? For Christmas,

Lennon: 8:32

I feel like traditions give us a reason to slow down and to be together in a way that is expected. Yeah, and with a reference point of we know what we're doing and we know how to enjoy it. That's why it's always worth making time to do certain things. There's a way of doing the holidays where traditions are really about letting everyone see how good you are at family. Mm. By you and you live for the moment of posting what you're doing. That's a way that traditions become burdens. Yeah, actually. But the little things that maybe no one knows, but you and your spouse or you and your kids, they're really fantastic because they kind of ground the holidays and bring a little bit of sanity and togetherness to it. Because I guess, here's the deal, traditions. They kind of facilitate these ideal moments and the holidays as a whole just are not always ideal.

Christal: 9:27

Yeah, I think we get. A picture of how Christmas should be in our minds. Kind of how we do with a lot of things. As parents or a couple, we just wanna make it like the best Christmas ever. We want everything to be perfect, everybody be happy. And in real life, life is still going on. During Christmas time, things still happen, right? Yeah. We still have regular life, and then you add on top of your regular schedule. All the Christmas stuff that you do, you can let it become even more stressful than it really needs to be. Yeah. And overcomplicate it. So I, I do think it's so good to be careful with your expectations, to set realistic expectations during the holiday season.

Lennon: 10:13

And one of the places that our expectations can be the most unrealistic is concerning those things that we put underneath the tree. The classic Christmas thing tree and presents is your jam. The joy of giving each other gifts is often like really covered up by the stress of getting the gifts. Yeah, and specifically being able to get the gifts You want to be able to give to people things that maybe they're great, but honestly maybe you can't afford'em. Right. Maybe. Maybe the budget's already tight, but you feel like you have to because it's Christmas and in the name of love and in the name of Jesus, I don't know. Maybe load up credit cards, stress out over providing more than you should really provide of things that won't really last and don't really matter much in the end.

Christal: 11:06

Yeah. We can't let our goal be to one up last Christmas. Because Right. That's so easy I've been guilty of that. Wanting to do that as well. I'm gonna make this Christmas even better than last Christmas, and to do it, I have to spend all this money and that's not really the case. I've come to find out more and more over the years how spending isn't what brings us happiness, and the amazing, perfect gift is not gonna make an amazing, perfect Christmas. If you really, really think back to your favorite Christmases, and I know we've even asked the kids these questions before, but it's not because it was a certain gift that you spent all this money on. Mom and dad, that's why my Christmas was good. It's usually, well, I loved when we went to the Christmas parade, or I loved when we watch this movie, I just wanna make sure we do those things for Christmas. And so we really do need a budget. First of all, we need. A realistic budget for Christmas gifts.

Lennon: 12:05

Yes. An amount you can spend and afford and whatever fits into it fits. And if it doesn't fit into the budget, it doesn't fit into Christmas.

Christal: 12:13

Exactly. Especially, I will just say, I know personally some families that. Said this, but our budgets may not be what they were because of the economy right now and things like that. Or maybe you're going through just a different kind of a, a year and so you may not have the budget you had last year. But that's okay. Your Christmas can be a wonderful Christmas without that.

Lennon: 12:39

As far as the gifts go, the thought that's put into it really is more important than the amount. Mm-hmm. You know, for instance, some of our best friends have a house full of teenagers, and the most well received gift that they have ever given their kids was an individualized bag of their favorite snacks. Like for each of'em. And the first time they did that, my friend told me, I don't know why we've been stressing out about iPads and clothes. They enjoyed this bag of snacks more than anything else. It's what they talked about, you know, going into the new year. He was like, we're just not gonna freak out over stuff anymore because it doesn't, that's not what matters.

Christal: 13:19

Right. And I will say one way to do. Something for Christmas that makes it memorable is to have experiences together that don't have to break the bank. I know for us, for example, or friends I've talked to, they love to go drive around in neighborhoods and see beautiful light displays. It doesn't even have to be something you pay to get into.

Lennon: 13:40

Yeah.

Christal: 13:41

And then another idea is. What's your favorite Christmas movies? Bake a Dessert. Like do something like that as a family? You just wanna make time in your calendar for those things.

Lennon: 13:52

Yeah.

Christal: 13:53

Do you remember when we did this one big thing? We were trying to do special for the kids. We went to the Galleria Mall in Dallas, which is beautiful. It has like this amazing tree indoors, right?

Lennon: 14:06

Yeah. Yeah. It's the biggest indoor Christmas tree in the United States.

Christal: 14:09

Yeah. And we thought, Hey, let. Really do something big and let's spend all this money on getting ice skates and do ice skating in the gallery. A mall by the tree. Yeah. Yeah. Right. And we'd never been ice skating before, like the kids had never been. Right. I think I had been before, but I, I did not like it really. But I mean, I think we spent about 50 bucks a person. That's my guess.

Lennon: 14:34

Yeah.

Christal: 14:35

But it was crazy for us like to put that money down for an experience. But you know, we were like, let's do this and do you remember what happened?

Lennon: 14:44

Okay. Our, everybody, our kids made one lap around the ice. One and a sprained ankle. Yeah. And a large amount of discouragement later, you know, it was incredibly falling. Crowded people falling everywhere. Our kids were done. Yeah. They made one lap and they did not want to do another one. And so all that, all that money was gone right away. Mm-hmm. And but what our teenage girls have talked about this year, they want to go back to the mall, not to ice skate. To see the tree.

Christal: 15:15

Yeah.

Lennon: 15:16

We don't have to spend a dollar to see the tree. It's just time. And it's what you're talking about.

Christal: 15:22

Exactly.

Lennon: 15:23

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Christal: 16:41

Well, okay. There's another pain point maybe you could say that could happen during the holidays and that could be navigating our family dynamics. Like trying to make everyone happy. Yes. Which is something you really can't do anyways.

Lennon: 16:55

You can't, and every married couple knows this because whenever you first got married, the first set of holidays came around. And if you weren't disagreeing on where you should spend your first Christmas. One set of the parents, or probably both sets of your parents, we're expecting you to be with them, and it really becomes this tension deal. Everybody has expectations of you. We want you here. This is what we always do. Even though now we includes a whole nother person and a whole nother family to accommodate. It can be very difficult. And if you add in divorce. Stepparents, those kind of things, it can become overwhelming and make you just wanna throw up your hands and say, forget it.

Christal: 17:41

Yeah. We tried to do this one year when our kids were at that three, three and under place. We decided we were living in North Carolina at the time. Mm-hmm.

Lennon: 17:51

And we're

Christal: 17:51

like, let's make a trip to Texas. In the van, in the minivan, and we're gonna strap those babies in. We're gonna drive through the night. It's gonna be awesome. We're gonna go through all these parts of Texas as well.'cause our family was spread out to different parts of Texas.

Lennon: 18:07

Yeah.

Christal: 18:08

We just were like, we're gonna do this thing. And we drove that first night. it did not turn out well.

Lennon: 18:14

We didn't even cover a hundred miles.

Christal: 18:16

Yeah.

Lennon: 18:16

Whenever we were planning to drive all the way through the night, because in a perfect world, the kids were gonna, we were gonna stop for dinner. Mm-hmm. And they were gonna sleep. Yeah. But within a few miles of being out of town, it was weeping and gnashing of teeth. It did not stop until we got a hotel. I don't know, midnight or something. Just totally discouraged.

Christal: 18:37

And of course, we're trying to lay these ki overtired kids down around midnight, and they don't e even fall asleep. Well, at that point. You know when they're overstimulated. Yes. And then they can't sleep well. And then we get back on the road that morning and we just drove and drove. And finally we got there at three in the morning. The

Lennon: 18:56

following day.

Christal: 18:56

The following day.

Lennon: 18:57

Because at that point, that night, everybody was so exhausted. Mm-hmm. That they did sleep. The moral of the story is what in the world were we thinking? Who was requiring all of, we were putting so much pressure on ourselves. And we were trying to make all the grandparents happy and it, it was, it was too much.

Christal: 19:17

Yeah. I mean, you know, I don't regret that we made a trip to Texas in the minivan or anything. No, I think it's, it's good to sacrifice some time and effort to be with family, but it was what we did in addition to that, deciding we're gonna go. Five hours this way, now you know, we just could have probably planned that trip in a way that worked with the phase of life we were in at that time.

Lennon: 19:42

That's a big deal. Mm-hmm. Not every phase allows for everything, and sometimes you gotta give yourself a little bit of grace. You've gotta be willing to disappoint somebody because you can't always make everyone happy. So one of the best things that a family can do as early as possible is establish some sort of rotation. You know, we mentioned having Thanksgiving Day at your parents' house. Mm-hmm. Next year that'll be at my dad's house. And you know, we do something earlier in the week if possible with the other set of family. Things like that have just brought. Some kind of predictability instead of just stress and expectation.

Christal: 20:20

Yeah. Out of that really came the decision to have Christmas morning with just us and the kids at home. Let them wake up to their home and I know that may not be perfectly done every year. I mean, of course I wouldn't mind a Colorado vacation one day wake up in the Colorado Mountains. Me neither. But that really helped us have some. Consistency with just the kids and enjoy the family that we have so I think find the things that work good for your family, allows you to be with your family, but. We can totally put so many expectations on ourselves. And if we're not doing it ourselves, other people are gonna do it too.

Lennon: 21:02

Yeah. But you have no one to impress my friends with how you choose to Christmas and how you decide to try to approach the holidays with you and your family. So just for the sake of a little sanity, friends, you know, make a budget. Decide that you can live with certain levels of disappointing people. Discuss some expectations before the holidays arise. Uh, decide what matters for you and your household. And by all means, give yourself a little grace whenever things don't go perfectly. Because the holidays are almost always a mixed bag, and yet they're still good.

Christal: 21:36

They are so good. This is making me think of this SNL skit with Matt Damon, and it's called The Best Christmas ever.

Lennon: 21:43

Best Christmas ever. Yep.

Christal: 21:44

And him and his wife are at the end of the Christmas day relaxing on the couch and they're talking about the day and they're romanticizing, how things went. It was not. Reality on how things really went. No. Yeah. Do you remember that they would flashback to the scenes and show what really happened through the day?

Lennon: 22:03

Yeah. He's saying things like, I just love being with your family today. I love him so much. And then the flashback, his father-in-law standing up from the couch and farting in his face, you know, or, and the kids, they were just so overjoyed with all the gifts. Cuts away to kids fighting. Mm-hmm. Over the gifts. Mm-hmm. And at the end of it all Christmas, I think the end of line of the skid is Christmas. Even whenever, even when it's the worst, it's the best.

Christal: 22:31

I like that.

Lennon: 22:32

Me too.

Christal: 22:33

That's really good. Yeah.'cause I think there's, it's, you will enjoy Christmas more if you can laugh at things that don't go well, and you can just be in the moment, enjoy what's happening and not make it something. It doesn't need to be

Lennon: 22:48

And so let's close with that to keep it from becoming something it doesn't need to be. Uh, we've gotta remember what it was supposed to be in the first place. I mean, why do we do Christmas? We're celebrating as every pastor everywhere is reminding every church. Mm-hmm. They're celebrating. We're celebrating the birth of Christ. And whenever you spend time in the gospels and around these birth stories, number one, we remember that Christmas is about what God has given to us, not about what we need to somehow be able to afford to give to each other. Yeah. But then the circumstances of Jesus' birth, we sing, oh, holy Night, we sing all of these things that make us picture. Maybe everything being bathed in kind of ethereal light and perfection. But Jesus was born where sheep were born. He was surrounded by manure and smoky walls. Uh, he was born to parents that were so poor that whenever they went to the temple to offer a sacrifice. Shortly after Jesus was born, they offered a sacrifice of pigeons, which was an accommodation for people that could not afford. A lamb. And so Jesus wasn't born into perfection, and yet he came to do the most perfect and wonderful thing in laying his life down for us. If we can get our hearts and minds around that, it's gonna be hard to get Christmas wrong, whatever else you. Feel you aren't able to do.

Christal: 24:17

Yeah. This is making me think of that Christmas song. I love it so much. By Stevie and Curtis Chapman. Christmas is All in the Heart. Yeah. Which is a really kind of cheesy title. Yeah. But it, I'm telling you, every time I hear it, every Christmas I like, it makes me tear up and get chills.

Lennon: 24:34

Yeah.

Christal: 24:34

Because it talks about not having much, but still having Christmas and giving, giving what we can to one another, loving each other. But then at the end it talks about. The night Jesus came on this earth was to save us. And that was the whole point. And so I think too, as parents, we can really bring this into our home to kind of come back to the main point and what are we doing this for? We can guide them spiritually, you know, guide our kids spiritually during the season. There's some really easy ways to do that. Maybe we read as. Story, a, a picture book with our little ones about Jesus, about the Christmas story. Something that just teaches the meaning. Yeah. Of Christmas. We love to attend church and go to Christmas service of some sort with a whole family so we can really remember why we're celebrating Christmas. Another thing. I think is a great idea personally for yourself is find some type of advent or a scripture reading that you do every day of December. So easy and short does not need to be long, but doing something that brings your mind and your heart back to the word and to the truth of why we celebrate Christmas.

Lennon: 25:55

And so friends, that's really our encouragement for you. Slow down, enjoy each other. Don't make it about everything you can afford and make it about the Lord. Remember the king who came to save the world? Well, guys, that's it for today. Don't forget to follow or subscribe, so you never miss an episode. We drop new ones every Tuesday, and if today's conversation encouraged you, we would love it. It means so much. If you would leave us a review, you can visit Home and Marriage for more resources like our Six Habits of Happy Couples Course. And if you'd like us to come speak at your church or event, you can schedule us through the website. You can also follow along on Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, all those links are in the show notes.

Christal: 26:38

Thank you for joining us today on the Home and Marriage Podcast. We really do believe that home can be your favorite place. We'll be back again next week with more encouragement and wisdom to help you become better at home and stronger together.