If I had to choose one word to describe my 2025, it would be bittersweet.
This is the fifth time I’m sharing the Christmas Pudding episode — I love it that much.
This year, though, it lands differently for me.
I’ve always treasured this episode for its humor and warmth. The conversation was a rare chance to reconnect with a childhood friend who now lives across the world.
But recent experiences have tuned me in to a quieter note that’s always been there beneath the laughter: the tenderness in Robert and Lisa’s memories.
How did I miss it before?
Their traditions carry not only joy but also the ache of absence and loss.
Like the thestrals in Harry Potter, some truths remain invisible until something in life expands our sight.
Over time, events give us broader vision and invite us to notice more layers in the stories we thought we already knew.
And there is that word again: bittersweet. In cooking, bitterness doesn’t erase sweetness; a touch of orange zest, for example, can sharpen and amplify sugar so the sweetness becomes clearer.
As life changes and makes us more sensitive to different tones, may we hold on to the clarity and beauty of life’s sweetest moments, which are often found in our traditions.
At the same time, some seasons are rightly filled with pain, and demanding joy would be neither reasonable nor respectful.
When the world’s bitterness presses on us, may it — as Robert and Lisa suggest at the episode’s close — point our hearts toward the eternal love of God.
Emmanuel: God with us — gloriously displayed every Christmas.
Listen to Robert and Listen Now
The Christmas Story According to the Gospels of Luke and Matthew
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More Christmas Episodes
- 161 Christmas in Indonesia with M. Aimee Tan
- 160 Christmas in Bruderhof with Diana Rutherford
- 159 Christmas in Ecuador with Sofia Alarcon
- Christmas Traditions Around the World (Podcast Interviews)
- 146 Christmas in Norway with Alexandra Taylor
- 145 Christmas in South Africa with Kate Jack
- 144 Christmas in the Valley of the Kings, France
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