made it. Just thinking about the pressures of the season can be a joy-stealer. The Yuletide Factor may be the very thing God can use to help restore the wonder of it all. I know the author would be deeply rewarded for his labour of love if you would respond with the enthusiasm of Charles Dickens’ Scrooge, who, after his spiritual awakening, exulted, “I will honour Christmas in my heart, and try to keep it all the year.”1
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Moira Brown, a beloved and award-winning Canadian television personality, is best known as co-host of 100 Huntley Street, Canada’s longest running daily TV talk show. Since graduating from Capernwray Bible School in England and Briercrest Bible College in Saskatchewan, she has been recognized with distinctive honours for more than 40 years of commitment to the broadcasting industry. In 2013 Moira received the Queen Elizabeth II Diamond Jubilee Medal for “dedicated service to peers, to community and to Canada”; and in 2014, she was named one of Canada’s top one hundred Christian women leaders. Known and loved across Canada as “Television’s Encourager,” Moira recently shared her adventures of faith in her book Hugs from Heaven, where she reflects in a warm, conversational “show and tell” style on her life experiences as a wife, mother and television host. Moira is supported in her career by Richard, her husband of 26 years, who works on behalf of African orphans and widows as international director of Visionledd, and by their young adult children, Katherine and Davy.
1 Charles Dickens, A Christmas Carol (London: Bradbury and Evans, 1858), 91.
Story Behind the Reflection and Discussion Guide
After my first book, Bent Hope, was released, I was quite surprised by two things. Pleasantly surprised, I am happy to say—but surprised all the same. First of all, I had not anticipated the amount of feedback I would get from readers who were taking the book on slowly and thoughtfully, committing themselves to single chapters at a time with a day, or often several days, of reflection in between. Secondly, I was taken aback by the number of small groups, books clubs and classrooms (both faith-based and non) that were processing the material with follow-up discussion sessions. I thought it was a sweet anomaly, owing perhaps to the unique subject matter—until the release of my follow-up book, Dancing with Dynamite, when the same things occurred.
Before I began working on the third book in the series, The Yuletide Factor, I spent much time considering how the previous ones were processed by individual readers and groups and how I might better facilitate these activities moving forward. It became clear to me that the nature and style of the books I was writing were lending themselves to pauses for emotional and spiritual reflection and lively discussion: story-driven, with equal parts sentimentality, social commentary, history, and pop culture, while ultimately asking, If there is a loving God, where is He in all of this?
By this point in my journey, I had also written and illustrated my first two children’s books—The Cardboard Shack Beneath the Bridge: Helping Children Understand Homelessness and It’s Hard Not to Stare: Helping Children Understand Disabilities—and included discussion guides for parents and educators as parts of those books. The feedback around that was, and is, very positive and encouraging.
Taking all these things into account, I became excited about the notion of creating a special complementary component to this book. Something that might be used to help readers unpack thoughts and emotions, whether alone, with a friend, or as part of a group if they choose to.
At the same time, I was quite sure it would be best to bring someone else on board to make it so. As I state in the prologue of this book, “I wanted to be sure that things ultimately turn back to you, the reader, and wanted to have someone else bring a fresh voice to guide things accordingly.”
It is by no means “too much” that I have boasted about Anne Brandner’s contribution to The Yuletide Factor in both the author’s acknowledgement and the prologue of this book. Should you choose to receive her comments and questions for personal reflection or use them for group discussion, I am confident you will find her warm tone and insights very meaningful in the material that accompanies each chapter.
Anne and I, and all the contributors to this book, share a sincere hope and heartfelt prayer that you, dear readers, would be blessed, esteemed and encouraged by what you find in these pages and where your own reflections and discussions lead you.
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Anne Brandner has worked in the field of international religious freedom and human rights for nearly 15 years. After completing an internship with the International Justice Mission in Washington, DC, in 2001, Anne earned her MA in political science, where she examined the pursuit of justice and reconciliation after the Rwandan genocide. It was during that time that Anne developed a deep and lasting interest in the value of apology, forgiveness and reconciliation in the wake of conflict and mass atrocities. Anne has worked in a number of policy and advocacy roles, engaging on issues including extreme poverty, religious persecution and refugee protection. Most recently, Anne worked as director of policy and international relations for a Toronto-based foundation and served on the international leadership team of the Religious Liberty Partnership. Anne’s work has taken her around the world, from refugee camps on the Eritrea-Ethiopia border to the US State Department, from the streets of Hong Kong to the United Nations Human Rights Council. With an undergraduate degree in communications, Anne currently works as a freelance writer and editor. She lives in Toronto with her husband, Paul, and their awesome kids.
Prologue: Snow Globe
It’s a wonder that most of us never give up on covering our messes, hiding our foibles and mitigating our mistakes. It’s an exhausting path to choose over a lifetime, yet it is the path most chosen.
When I was a little boy, I knocked an expensive snow globe off a shelf in a department store, unbeknownst to my busy mom, several aisles away, who had told me only moments before not to touch it. It cracked wide open, and one by one, miniature villagers in scarves and mittens, tobogganers and ice-skaters poured out at my feet. In a panic I booted the shattered globe beneath the bottom shelf and then awkwardly worked to kick the tiny townspeople likewise into the shadows. It was a frantic few seconds. Leaving nothing more than a glittery puddle on the floor as poor wintery evidence, I ran to the end of the aisle, frantic to escape the predicament rather than have to explain it. The timing could not have been tighter—I literally bumped into my mom as she turned back to find me. She took my hand and insisted I not wander off again. As I was tugged away, I took one last look back, still anxious that my little-boy crime would be revealed. All looked good but for one little townsman lying face down far from the spill. He had escaped my galoshes.
We spent quite some time in that store after my cover-up, while my mom completed her shopping and paid at the till. All the while, all I could think about was that tiny little man lying in the ornament aisle waiting to implicate me by his mere presence. When guilt was my greatest concern, he was all I could think of. A lot of emotional energy and headspace wasted on fear and self. The very way many of us live our entire lives. Interestingly enough, the moment we left the store and I didn’t need to contend with him, I didn’t give him—or my misdemeanor—a second worried thought.
Snow globes are a strange treasure. One can control the speed of the swirling elements, but the characters ultimately remain unfazed. If only real life was like that.
A downtown Toronto blast of winter can be an all-sorts experience. And when icy wind chills meet thick moisture off Lake Ontario and swirl through the tunnel of skyscrapers in the financial district, ice pellets detonate like buckshot. The giant snow globe swirls ferociously, but those inside it are anything but unfazed. There’s simply no way to survive an ice storm but face down. Like a lost miniature villager awaiting a little boy’s boot.
It was in this battlefield of weather that I nearly
