“Always give someone else the best slice.”

Wow, that doesn’t sound like me. Except maybe sometimes when i’m with my wife. But also even sometimes not.

And actually it’s not me, it’s my good friend Dalene Reyburn, who wrote this super helpful piece, ‘How to feast and not get fat this festive season: 20 small ideas.’

There is some really good stuff in there, like:

If you can, determine to give away at least half your body weight, in food and stuff, to those less fortunate, before Christmas.

and:

Every time you shop between now and Christmas, add food items to your grocery list with the intention of buying them for someone who needs the calories more than you do.

Although Dalene did also write one about not swimming your food in gravy and who needs that negativity [love my gravy!!!]

But seriously, check it out, it’s really great.

The stuff about overeating is great – if i was going to write a piece about Christmas it would definitely be about that. And as i thought that thought, it came to me that a lot of Christmas excess comes out of a space of lack of intentionality – nontentiality, as we’ll be calling it from now.

# i buy lots of crap for people who really don’t need stuff [while many others do] because that’s what has always been done and that’s what everyone around me is doing

# We make an excessive amount of Christmas food, because Christmas.

# We eat more than we should and feel sick and have to lie down and recover before the next course [seriously, that used to be me, every year, but i think i’m getting better] because, well, Christmas.

So with Christmas still a really large stone’s throw away, let me encourage you, before the fact, to be intentional in the way you approach things.

# In terms of what you buy – and this is probably for all the guys who are waiting for December 23rd, most of the women got their back in April, let’s not fool ourselves – why not make a conscious decision to not buy expensive stuff for people who don’t need it. Rather seek to identify a person or family in need and use the money you would have spent on the unnecessary to do something quite significant. One year i worked out exactly how much i would have spent on all my friends and family and then gave them all nothing but directed the money towards two families who i heard were struggling a little – one of my best Christmasses ever!

# What if you gave your whole feast away to someone else? Take the budget of what you would normally spend on your excessive meal [maybe this is something your extended family might even be interested in joining you in – or something they’d kick you out of the family for – exciting either way] and give it anonymously to a friend or neighbour you know is struggling via a third party or an envelope slipped into their mailbox with an explanation.

# Invite someone to your meal. If giving up on the big feast feels a journey too far for this year, why not look around and invite someone or a couple or a family who you know is likely to be alone for Christmas, to join you for your meal. Imagine a Christmas that was more about the people than the things? For many people, Christmas can be one of the loneliest times in the year – breakups, divorce, death, sickness are just some of the things that leave people in a space where Christmas might not be all that fun.

# Get creative – last year we joined with Val’s sister and our nieces and did a tradition that i used to do with my mom and then a bunch of people from their church. The girls decorated some brown paper bags in the week leading up to Christmas with colours and sticky things and glittery stuff and then on Christmas day we made a whole bunch of sandwiches [really good stuff] and threw in some bags of chips and fruit and juice boxes and then drove to a few places we knew homeless people were staying and spent a little bit of time talking to them and sharing a meal with them.

And some other 5th thing, but i have to go now… maybe add some more later.

But what do you have?

What’s an intentional piece of advice or idea you have for Christmas? Comment away!