Festivus, Trauma, and Holiday Culture

Find out what the “Six White Boomers” means for Australians during the holidays in this special Christmas week episode of Being Human with Steve Cuss. Steve gets cozy alongside The Bulletin co-hosts Russell Moore and Clarissa Moll for a candid, funny, and deeply comforting conversation about Advent, Christmas carols, and the “mental and emotional load” many people carry this season. Together they explore joy and grief at the manger, the hope of Emmanuel (God with us), and how the nativity story—through figures like Joseph, the shepherds, and the light in John 1—invites us to bring our whole selves to Jesus and be “human-sized” again. 

Episode Resources:

• Andrew Peterson’s Behold the Lamb of God

• How A Charlie Brown Christmas Almost Wasn’t (The New Yorker)

• Bing Crosby - Christmas Classics

• “In the Bleak Midwinter” (Christina Rossetti poem + Gustav Holst tune)

• Boney M’s Mary’s Boy Child

• https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/article/just-drop-the-blanket/

• A Charlie Brown Christmas: Linus reciting Luke 2:8-20

• Russell Moore’s Always Festivus and Never Christmas (article)

• White Christmas (movie trailer)

• The Bells of St. Mary’s (movie trailer)

• National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation (trailer)

• The Nightmare Before Christmas (“What’s This?” clip)

• Six White Boomers (Australian Christmas song about kangaroos)

• Wombat Divine (Australian children’s Christmas story)

Biblical Passages

• Luke 2:8-10 (ESV)

• Matthew 2 (ESV)

• John 1 (ESV)

• Romans 8 (ESV)

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Get Your Copy:

The Five Steps to Christmas Sanity PDF

New Candles, Advent Prayers, and Journals:

https://www.stevecusswords.com/

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