Does Christmas ever feel more rushed than meaningful?

Between shopping lists, holiday parties, and endless to-do's, it's easy to miss the beauty of the season. In this heartfelt solo episode, Collide founder Willow Weston shares some of her family's favorite Christmas traditions and how simple, intentional moments can help you slow down, deepen your faith, and create lasting memories with the people you love. Whether you grew up with meaningful traditions or are starting from scratch, you'll leave inspired to make this Christmas one your family will remember for years to come.

Meet Willow Weston

This week, Collide founder Willow Weston takes the mic for a special solo episode celebrating the beauty of Advent, Christmas traditions, and creating meaningful moments with the people you love. Drawing from her own story—from growing up without many holiday traditions to intentionally building faith-filled rhythms with her own family—Willow offers practical ideas and heartfelt encouragement to help you experience the joy of Emmanuel, God with us, this Christmas season.

In This Episode, You'll Discover…

• Why meaningful traditions can strengthen your family's faith and relationships.
• How to create Christmas traditions—even if you didn't grow up with them.
• Simple Advent ideas that help keep Jesus at the center of the holiday season.
• Creative ways to serve others together as a family during Christmas.
• Why your most treasured holiday memories often come from intentional moments, not expensive gifts.
• How inviting others into your celebrations can reflect the heart of Christ.

How This Episode Will Encourage You

Christmas doesn't have to be perfect to be meaningful. Whether your family is large or small, thriving or hurting, God can use intentional traditions to cultivate connection, generosity, gratitude, and faith. Willow reminds us that some of the most life-changing moments happen around ordinary tables, simple acts of kindness, and traditions rooted in the love of Jesus.

Welcome to the Collide Podcast. We're a growing community of everyday gals colliding with Jesus in our mess, our pain, our joy, and our stories. We value showing up as we truly are.

So that's what you'll find here, walls and masks being torn down so that we can allow Jesus to meet us where we truly are and hear about other women doing the same. We can't wait to collide with you.

Hey, guys. Welcome to the Collide Podcast. This is Willow Weston, the founder and director of Collide.

And normally you find me interviewing someone, and that's one of my very favorite things I get to do, is talk to people about how they're seeing Jesus show up, run into their lives, and collide with them in beautiful ways, and how they're being used in the world to do the same. But today, I'm hanging out, coming at you from the podcast room at the Collide HQ over here.

And it is the beginning of December, and there's so much that comes at us in the holiday season, but I think there's also so much beauty that we can capture.

And so I just want to have a little conversation with you around this idea of the beauty that can come from tradition around Advent, around the holidays, around Christmas, and the intentionality can actually bless you and your family and your friends, and you can benefit from living into and leaning into traditions. I grew up in single mom's home and I had no siblings. And my mom was very much, you might think she's a.

She was a hippie, but she actually called herself a beatnik, which she would kind of define as an intellectual hippie. And tradition wasn't a huge part of my life.

Nor was church or Jesus or religion or the meaning of Christmas the only tradition I remember growing up doing with my mom every single Christmas. I lived in a small town in eastern Washington in the Pacific Northwest, and it's very snowy there in the winter.

And my mom very much grew up in ski culture. Her dad started the Mount Hood Skee bowl and Mount Hood Meadows in Oregon.

And so when we were living in Washington, in Eastern Washington, it was so snowy. And so I always had a pair of cross country skis, and so did my mom.

And we'd latch those things on and we'd bring a rope and we'd cross country ski out into the forest. And it was so beautiful.

When you get past the roads and the houses and you get out where all there is is trees covered in snow and branches covered in snow and nature and everything is covered in white, it was so beautiful. And we would ski out and we would find our own Christmas tree every single year. And we would tie a rope around it.

After we cut it down with a saw, we tie a rope around the trunk, and then we tie a rope around our waist and we would pull that tree all the way back into town and come home and set it up. It always was the Charlie Brown Christmas tree. It was always small.

But I will always remember was a tradition that shaped me in, in some beautiful way. And it was a meaningful moment that my mom and I shared. Though there were a lot of other non traditional things.

We never knew who we were going to spend holidays with or what kind of food we would eat. I mean, I think there was a Thanksgiving where we had Chinese food, we had strangers in our home, or we would be at random people's houses.

Never did I attend a church or know the meaning of Christmas. But I had that one tradition with my mom that was very special.

When I was in high school, around age 15, I had to move out of my house because of what was going on in my relationship with my mother. And it was very difficult and I had to leave.

And a family took me in, an aunt and uncle that I didn't know that well across the other side of the state. And they took me into their house. And I will never forget the first Christmas Eve that I went to their holiday function.

Like I said, I hadn't experienced large family and I hadn't experienced the religious aspect of Christmas. And I remember hearing how they had this gift exchange.

And it was my aunt and uncle and then my aunt Rhonda, her extended family, so all her siblings and their kids and parents, and they put all their names into a hat. And you draw out of the hat, maybe I can't remember. Maybe it was six months prior to Christmas.

And you'd get one name and that was the person that you had to get a gift for, but you actually couldn't purchase the gift. You had to make a homemade gift. And it was really intimidating at first, but so cool.

I remember this story being on the news because it was so special to see how this entire family with people with all different giftings, whether it was woodworking or sewing or cooking or whatever it be, they came up with something special to give to the person who they drew that year. And I remember thinking, oh man, I don't know how to make stuff. I'm not crafty. And I learned how to sew in this family gift exchange experience.

I learned how to do ceramics and paint ceramics and make some pottery stuff. I mean, there's these things that I began to learn because I had to enter into this tradition that was so special that this family had.

And it kind of made me think outside the box of going to a store and buying something for someone. But instead, what can I make them with my hands?

And so we go on Christmas Eve to my first exchange where I wrapped up this thing that I had painted and we had a crab feast. And I remember it was my first time where I really experienced casseroles.

I grew up with a mom who owned a cafe, and it was, you know, very like farm to table food and very kind of Pacific Northwest cuisine and super delicious. People would travel from Seattle to eastern Washington to go to my mom's restaurant. And I ordered off a menu every time I ate as a kid.

So casseroles weren't in my experience. And I remember rolling into this tradition of.

Of rich with grandparents and aunts and uncles and siblings, and everyone brought casseroles and salads.

And, you know, I saw casseroles that had cornflakes on top and marshmallows on top, and some of it scared me, and some of it was absolutely delicious. And they had this crab feed, and every year they had this crab feed where they covered this huge table.

And everyone sat at the same table, which was really beautiful, and they covered the whole thing with newspaper. And then they put crabs all the way down and. And crab crackers all the way down, and you just crack crab and you ate casserole.

And people talked and there was a buzz and there was this joy. It was this beautiful experience that I was invited into. And then we went down into the basement of the house, and they got out a Bible.

And everyone was sitting in a circle. I don't know how many people, maybe 30 people, maybe 25. And they said that we were going to read the Christmas story.

I had never heard the Christmas story. I didn't know what it was.

And so they opened up the Bible to the gospels, and each person read one verse and then passed the Bible on to the next person and then to the next person, and then to the next person. And I remember just being amazed. The first time I ever heard the Christmas story, I read part of it.

And though my heart, in my spirit, weren't buying in, there was something that was so beautiful about hearing it in this communal way where everyone took turns reading scripture.

And then they had this beautiful gift exchange where everyone got to share the thing that they made with the works of their hands, with their Heart with their creativity. It was a beautiful experience, a beautiful tradition, and I got to share in that tradition for all the years that I lived in with that family.

And I. I'm going to share a few traditions that have really been rich for me.

And I'm sharing them with you today because I don't know where you're at this holiday season, but I know that oftentimes we're yearning for more joy in our experience at Christmas. We're yearning for more connection, we're yearning for more spirituality.

And I think traditions that we build into our lives, into our family's lives, into our children's lives, can bring about that beauty and meaning and connection that we're longing for. And a lot of the traditions that I'm going to share with you aren't necessarily spiritual. Some of them are. Some of them aren't.

But I have learned from other people and from their traditions. I didn't have the experience as a kid to grow up in a home that talked about Jesus and brought meaning to Christmas.

I didn't have those kinds of experiences and traditions. And so I've really taken note and learned from a lot of other people what they do.

One of our longest standing traditions that I think we've had for, geez, I don't know, 23 years is with our friends Ron and Cynthia Pye. And we have done this tradition since before we had kids.

And the tradition is, is that every Friday after Thanksgiving, so you have Thanksgiving, right? And then the next morning, we meet the pies. And we did this without kids. Now we're doing it with kids.

We meet at Starbucks, we get coffee, and then we head out to a Christmas tree farm. And usually it looks like, you know, you hit one farm and then you don't love what you see and you hit another one.

Some years it's been, you know, man, we've gone to five farms because trees are brown that year, or there was bad weather, or you go to the first one and you love it.

Or, man, one year there was a storm and we went to Lowe's and literally sunk to that level where we're like, we're just gonna go to a box store and buy a tree. And my husband was out putting the trees up on the are kind of grumpy and complaining while me, Ron, and Cynthia were in the car, not helping.

So there's a lot of jokes. Rob gets grumpy until the lights are up. And then we usually ask him if he wants whiskey, which is one of his favorite things to drink.

And Then you know what? He feels a lot better. But one year the tree fell down after the lights were up.

I mean, we've had so many hilarious experiences together and now our kids are a part of it. And the pies kids are much younger than our kids. But we get in the car and we crank up the Christmas music.

It's the first time we turn on Christmas music. And we have a rule. Well, actually, I should say I have a rule. Christmas music only until Christmas is over.

So I don't let anyone in my car, listen to anything. Chris. I'm one of those annoying people for sure. Like, don't get in my car in December if you don't like Christmas music.

But we wear Santa hats and we sing and we, we yell out the windows, merry Christmas. Or just like this obnoxious Christmas train going to find our tree.

And then we come back into town and we take the tree to the pies and we usually have lunch and we decorate their tree. And they have this funny argument every holiday over white lights or colored lights, which is really fun to watch every year.

And so they've over the years learned to compromise. So now they take turns. So I never know is this a colored light year or the white light year.

So, and they always pick like a stubby, short tree and we always try to pick like an eight foot tree because I love big trees.

And so after we have lunch at their house, then we all come over to our house and we put up a tree and we turn off all the lights once the tree is up. Oh, I should, I should say before we do that though, there's always a present that shows up underneath the tree for my kids and for Rob.

And every year, no matter how old my kids are, I act like that cheesy mom that's like, oh my gosh, how did these presents get here?

Even though they're expecting the present, and so they open the present and the present is an ornament that is for each of them that kind of symbolizes an experience that was meaningful for them that year. And so that's always fun. So we decorate the tree, we turn off all the lights, and we do a countdown. 10, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1.

And we turn on the lights in the dark and it's magical. And then we usually watch Chevy Chase's Christmas Vacation, one of my all time favorite movies. But that tradition has become so rich.

Here's how rich that tradition has become and here's why it matters to me so much. Man, I feel emotional Talking about this, I don't spend a lot of time.

With.

Family during the holidays. I usually see my dad's family for a dinner leading up to Christmas. And same thing with my mom when she was alive. She passed away this year.

So this tradition that we have with Ron and Cynthia and Lo and Kameya, their kids, has really become this rich tradition that feels like God has given us family in our life in a way that we really need them.

But it's family and friends and it has meant so much to us and you'd think, I mean, I have an 18 year old son, Aiden, who's off to college and super independent, loves his college life and I wasn't really sure if he was going to come home for this tradition. And his response when I asked him if he was was heck yeah, I wouldn't miss it.

And I think that's so interesting that an 18 year old, too cool for school kid wants to do this tradition even though the Pies kids are, you know, 15 years younger than he is or I guess not 15, 12 years younger or something than he is. It's just this beautiful, rich thing that I think has blessed my kids Christmas experience. They look forward to it every year.

They're surrounded by good people that love them and are committed to them and walk alongside them all through the year. But we get to celebrate this glorious season in December together.

And last year it was Covid and the Pies weren't comfortable with coming into our house, which was totally fine. Like I totally respect that.

And so we kind of went and got trees and, and sort of did our thing a little bit separate and everyone was kind of sad about it. And we were back at our house after we dropped off their tree.

And I remember being completely surprised when they stopped by our porch and we had our tree up with the lights and we have three windows on the other side of our tree that lead out to a front porch. And they were standing at the front porch and they looked merry.

They had holiday hats on and gloves and Ron plays guitar and he brought his guitar and their family sang Christmas carols for us and it was so beautiful in such a moment of joy and blessing.

And I made hot chocolate and put all the works on it, marshmallows, whipped cream, sprinkles, all the stuff and took it out and we sat out on the front porch in the freezing cold just not wanting Covid to kill this beautiful tradition that we've built for so many years. So I think if you're listening to that story and you don't have a tradition in your life or in your family that you feel like, is that warm or that.

That feeling of connection. You can create your own traditions. Friends, like, I come from a line of a family that doesn't have any traditions.

We don't have holiday or spiritual or Christmas traditions. And I've had to learn how to create my own. And you can create your own. You can.

You can create what you want to experience and feel, what you want your kids to experience and feel. That's. That's the work that I've tried to do for my own children. And you can do it, too.

The other thing that I learned from this amazing woman, Laura Atkins, man, I don't know if there's anyone who does Christmas and holiday traditions and intentionality around family, as well as this woman.

And I have gotten the great pleasure over the years to learn from her and be blessed by her, be mentored by her in a lot of ways, and learn from her as a mom how to make Christmas meaningful. And one year, she made me the very thing, same thing that she uses, and it was this amazing board.

I don't know if she takes cardboard or some sort of board, and she covers it with wrapping paper, and then she puts 25 different gift boxes, and they're all different colors and wrapped in Christmas wrap, and she attaches them to the board, and they have the. The top of the box in them, and they have bows and different stuff. They all look different, but very whimsical and fun.

And she did my children's very first Advent experience. And not only did she do it for my children, but she taught me how to do it every year since, and I've been doing it every year since.

And, man, I just have to say, I am so stinking grateful for the women that God has put in my life that I can learn from the riches that. That I can draw from and go, man, I love what you do in your family, and I want to do that in mine.

And I think if we can surround ourselves with women who we admire, women who we look up to and say, hey, what do you do for your family? I want to learn what you do, and I want to do it in mine. You know, how do you make a turkey? Some of you guys don't know how to stuff a turkey.

Ask a woman who cooks, how do I make a holiday meal? What recip do you use? What are some of your favorite traditions? How do you say you're thankful at Thanksgiving? How do you bless your kids with gifts?

At Christmas, but not, not over spoil them and make it about consumerism.

Like, one of the best things we can do is look up and look around and note the women that God has already placed in your life that you admire in some way, shape or form when it comes to the way that they're doing life with their family and their children and.

And literally ask them if you can just pick their brain and learn from them, because we can gather from her and her and her and her, and create a more beautiful life rich with tradition. And that's what I was able to do with Laura Atkins. She gave me her heart, she gave me her time. I. I watched her with her family. I saw how she.

She was such a blessing to her children, her husband and. And the things that she was doing. And I never had that model for me. So I wanted to glean that some of the stuff that she did.

So she made this Advent board. And it was so cool because every box had some little trinket and it had. And. And this is how we do it now. It has a trinket in every single day.

And we take turns. So, you know, we'll go Bella or Aiden first we trade off.

Every year goes Bella and then Aiden and then Rob and then me, and then Bella, Aiden, Rob and me, La, and Robin Knee all the way until the day of Christmas. And each day there's some little trinket. You don't have to spend a lot of money.

You can literally go to the dollar store, you can spend less than a dollar, you can put a piece of gum in there for all you want. But basically what I do now is I come up with a. With an item and a verse for each day. And sometimes the verse is about the Christmas story.

And it works really well with the trinket that I got to sort of invite the kids into something, but either ask a question about something about Jesus, the Emmanuel God with us and ties in with the scripture, and it's just a gift that they get to keep that blesses their day, or it's a little trinket. And I'll talk about how, you know, for example, for God to love the world that he gave his one and only son, you know, John 3:16.

And I put that verse in there and I talk about how God was the greatest giver. He gave his. His son. And so I want you to take this gift card to a coffee shop.

And I want you to find one person today who needs to remember that they're loved because maybe they're doubting it and give them that card. And so the things throughout the entire month shift from something that blesses them, something that they have to do to bless someone else.

And so there's kind of like a man. It ties in with the Christmas story and how God came and moved in with humanity and loves us as we are and calls us to love others.

And so that's a tradition that we do. And you can do it however you want.

And by the way, like, if you have questions, specific questions on how I do this, like, you know, shoot me an email, go to the Weeklight website, wecolide.net and find me on there and ask me questions. Because I am so grateful for people like Laura that I've inherited their ideas from.

And I'd love to pass on ideas, but that tradition is super rich with our kids. They look forward to it. Every day we gather together. It's a time we gather every single day in December. And we read the verse and we.

The person opens the present and they're challenged to do something with it. And on Christmas Day the 25th, it's an odd number, and we have four in our family. So we read the Christmas story, or we read it the night before.

And this last year, funny enough, one of the things that we did that someone opened it said, go downstairs and grab the Tupperware boxes of cookies for each person in the family. So I made cookies, and each person in the family got a box of cookies. And the challenge was to get in the car.

And once we got in the car, we didn't back out of the driveway until we made space.

We had time where we prayed and asked God to show each one of us a family or a person in our lives who needed to be reminded that they matter, who maybe were struggling. So we prayed and made space to listen.

And once we each heard who our person or family was, our evening was going to look like driving around and delivering those cookies to someone. And I remember it being such a blessing to us, probably more than the other person. But we had a friend who.

He was going through a divorce, an unwanted divorce. He didn't want to be. He didn't want to break up with his wife. And he was having a tough time, and this was his first Christmas.

And one of us thought of him when we had that margin of space in prayer. And so we drove down to his work and we. He was working at night, and we walked up to him and delivered him a box of cookies.

And, man, that was a beautiful moment that I think my kids got to See how we can do really simple things to bless people and remind them that they matter. It's not hard. We also had a neighbor who had Covid and his wife. They were remodeling their house.

There was literally, you know, no walls in most of their house. And he got Covid and his wife was living in another state. And one of our. One of us thought to bring him cookies.

And so, you know, we kind of were weenies and walked the cookies down to the mailbox and tried to open it without touching it, because Covid fear so silly. But anyways, we dropped off cookies for the guy who had Covid, and I'm sure that he enjoyed those.

And anyways, the night was getting late, and one of our kids was frustrated because they needed to get home and get. Get homework going. And I said, no, we're not going back until we get rid of all four boxes.

We're going to drive around downtown since we didn't think of someone for the fourth one. And we're going to drive around until we see someone. God's going to put someone in our path.

And I was like, that annoying mom that's like, kind of pushing for something that a teenager doesn't want to on and going, man, I hope this works out. And anyways, we're driving around and didn't see anyone. Didn't see anyone at first.

And then we end up at a stoplight, and, you know, there's cars in front of us, cars in back of us. And roll down our window because there was this guy playing grunge music underneath the outside of a building. So it was kind of echoing.

And, you know, I love me some grunge. So I was like, all about it. And kids were like, don't do it, mom. Don't do it. And I was like, no, man, I'm doing it.

And I just yelled out the window and was like, man, I know you don't know me, but do you want some cookies? And he ran over to the car door and grabbed the cookies and said, this made my night. And I was like, awesome.

And then the light turned green, and he ran back undercover to play his music. And we drove home and just talked about how cool it is to ask God to guide you towards someone and how he truly does.

He puts someone in your path, and you can just make their night. And there are so many people whose nights need to be made and days need to be made and moments need to be made.

And that we get to do that with our kids is a beautiful thing. I Don't think our family does it enough. I don't think we make margin enough to do things like this. I think we're too busy.

And I don't think this is something that we should just do at Christmas time, but it's definitely something we should do at Christmas time as well. So that was one of the things that was in the Advent calendar, was to go and bless people with these cookies.

And it ended up blessing us even more than I think it blessed those people. Well, last year, as we were talking about, we always talk about how can we give to other people or serve other people in need?

And we've done different stuff every year. We've done something that's local around here called the toy store.

It's super cool, where people who don't have much money but want to give to their kids, there's a community toy store that those parents can come and they can actually shop for their kids, but it's very cheap. But then they feel like they actually are the ones who bought something. They didn't get a handout, but they actually, like, bought something.

So they can buy, you know, very cheaply something for their. Their kids. And it's a beautiful thing. And so we've been a part of that.

We've been part of canned food drives, presents for people who are fostering children, giving gift cards to other people for the holidays.

And to be honest, sometimes I feel like, you know, you can get super busy in December with all the events and all the parties and all your own Christmas shopping, and then you kind of wake up and. And you realize, man, like, I'm kind of saving this whole. How can I bless other things to be almost, you know, 2/3 of the way down my list.

And that's just me being honest. I'm sure all of you are way cooler than me in that regards. But this last year, we talked about as a family, what.

What do we want to do to really bless a family in need this Christmas? And so we're in that conversation, definitely going to be doing that. But I kind of just told them there was kind of a sadness around last.

Last Christmas, it was Covid a lot of people in our family in our friendship group didn't feel safe getting together. And so that kind of left us. On Christmas Eve, we usually host a lot of people, and we had only two people coming over, and none of them were kids.

It was two adults. And I think my kids felt kind of sad. And so I wanted to do something special for them.

And I had interviewed Pastor Matt Atkins, on the podcast last Christmas. You should check out that. That podcast. But talked. Talked to him about some traditions that he does with his family. And he shared.

He has a huge family, lots of kids, and now grandkids. And every year they rent a limo. And he was talking about how special it is. They go looking at lights and stuff.

And I thought, wow, that sounds really expensive. And he told me, it's actually not super expensive.

So I looked into it myself, and I found a super good deal on this one particular day where they had nothing going. And I've never been in a limo, I've never rented a limo. No, I don't do this all the time.

I understand it's privileged to be able to do it, but I found a really good deal and I used some of my Christmas money and I booked this thing for an hour and a half. And I didn't tell anyone in my family. And so I just said, be dressed ready to meet your, you know, like, your favorite person. Like, someone that you.

You love. They're like, like, who? And I'm like, no, you need to be dressed like. And bring everything you want to give away, like, or to serve people.

So I was trying to kind of throw them off, right? And so my son's like, what do you mean? Like, who should I dress like? I was like, dress like you're gonna meet Kanye. He loves Kanye.

And my daughter was like, dress like you're gonna go to a T. Swift concert. And she's like, oh. And I told my husband, dress like you're gonna meet Russell Wilson.

It was so funny because they walked downstairs at 4 o' clock when they were supposed to meet in the living room. Aiden does not look presentable. Bella was annoyed. I can't remember. Rob was dressed in sports clothes, so they definitely, like.

I was just kind of hoping they'd all dress up because I know we're getting in a limo. I've never been in a limo. I'm thinking, this is going to be rad. Like, we'll dress up. It'll be fun. We'll drive around.

I got everyone's favorite drinks, everyone's favorite snacks, and they walked down. And, I mean, my husband had a pile of coats and gift cards. My son had all this change. Bella had stuff.

So they brought all the stuff that they're going to give away to people. I was trying to, like, throw them off so they wouldn't guess what we were going to do. So anyways, I open up the front door, like, come on, guys.

And we always Walk out the garage to our cars. So we walk out, they're like, we're going out the front door. I go, yes. And there's the limo. And they saw it, and they got so angry at me.

And they were like, what are we doing? This is not right. We are not driving around handing out coats and money and gift cards to homeless people. And I was like, what? No, we're not.

I totally lied to you guys to surprise you because we were going to have a sad Covid Christmas Eve without family. And so I rented this thinking we could drive around and listen to music and look at lights and have fun and we'll give that stuff away later.

And it took them about 20 minutes in the limo to relax and not be mad at me. And we had the best time once everyone understood, like, we were not giving stuff out of a limo that I rented.

And we listened to music and again ate those snacks and drinks and looked at lights. And we picked up a couple of our friends randomly. Like, we rolled up to their house, and we're like, hey, do you want to get in for 20 minutes?

And had little dance party parties and drove around and made two different families nights with the experience. It was so fun.

And then we came home and had our sweet little Christmas Eve with the guy who was going through the divorce and the woman who led me to the lord who impacted my life in such an amazing way, Cindy Albert. And I got to hang out with Cindy all night, and Rob hung out with Keith. And again, there weren't kids there.

And it was probably a really boring Christmas Eve after the limo ride. But I didn't realize we've always invited people over on Christmas Eve who don't have a place to go or don't have plans or who are struggling.

Like, we've always tried to make that space for people. And I think that's partly been a passion of mine because my aunt and uncle took me in when I needed it.

And so I've always wanted to make space for people in our home who need to feel like they have family. And so we do that every Christmas Eve.

But again, this Christmas Eve was weird because of COVID So we had a guy going through a divorce, and we had Cindy who hung out at our house on Christmas Eve. And I had no idea that Cindy was going to die this year.

And.

I got to spend Christmas Eve with her. I wish I knew that was my last Christmas with her.

But these moments that we get with each other guys, they're not forever, and they might seem simple or ordinary or mundane or just kind of average.

I mean, I was just sitting on a couch with Cindy, eating like, cheese and crackers and drinking wine and just chatting and catching up about life before she moved on to her next Christmas Eve party. But these moments together are everything. So keep leaning into moments with your people, no matter what they look like.

And feel free to build in traditions and even be crazy enough to start a new tradition like I did with the limo. And, you know, heck, you might tick your family off, but you also might be so spontaneous that you surprise them.

And they end up finding a lot of joy out of the experience we did.

For those of you who, you know, hate me too, and are judging me because I rented a limo, we did give out those coats and coins and gift cards later at another time. But that experience truly brought joy to us on Christmas Eve. We have something called raclette every Christmas Eve.

And I got this idea from my friend Shannon Epps, who taught me about raclette. And it's this Swiss dish. It's so beautiful, and it's everything you should need.

It's, you know, French bread and all sorts of different cheeses and toppings.

I make caramelized onion and homemade Alfredo sauce and homemade pesto and olives and sun dried tomatoes and green onions and sauteed mushrooms and bacon. I mean, it's a heart attack.

And you pick your cheese and you put it on this little pan, and then you, you know, you put the toppings on it, and then you put it underneath this machine and it melts it all ooey gooey. And then you spread it on bread, and it is so delicious. And so that's what we have every Christmas Eve. I could tell you so many traditions.

I think I've talked your ear off now about traditions, but my hope is that you will do something, even if it's just one thing this December. Maybe it'll take some planning, maybe some intentionality.

Maybe it'll take you being vulnerable and inviting people to your house or inviting people into your life. Maybe it'll take making you feel uncomfortable and you step into some activity of service where you bless others.

I'm not sure what tradition it is that you're feeling inclined to do, but all I know is what I've learned over the years, coming from being a girl who had very little tradition in my life to building in these things that we now do year after year after year, is that they create this richness, richness of tradition, warmth of family and friends, the joy of togetherness memories of love and the hope of God with us. I wish all those things for my family, and I wish them for you and yours. Merry Christmas, sweet friends. Keep colliding with Emmanuel.

We'll catch you next week.

Thanks for tuning in to keep up with us.

You can find us on Instagram @wecollide on Facebook as we Collide Women, and you can also visit our website at wecollide.net to find our blog resources, event information, and more. One last thing, if you enjoyed this episode, would you take a few seconds and leave us a review?

It seems like such a small act, but reviews help us to keep producing this content and help other women find it too. Thanks so much for tuning in to today's episode and letting us walk with you as you seek and collide with Jesus.