Strains of the Season: Food & Feasting
When I think about my all-time favorite times around the table, few of them center on the meal itself. I remember joyful encounters when the food that sat before me was nothing exquisite: like eating pizza on the floor with my best friends in college or laughing through bites of food truck tacos in a gas station parking lot. These moments were built on community, conversation, and connection—not what actually filled our plates.
But when it comes to food around the holidays, oftentimes I forget this reality. I tend to take the table full of people I love for granted, focusing my energy instead on making the star dish of the holiday spread or checking off that scratch-made cake recipe this year. As the weather gets cool and crisp, my goals are lofty; but as the days get shorter and my to-do list longer, that sparkle in my eye soon turns dull. I look at the calendar for December and see the school holiday party, the community group potluck, our various family get-togethers, and Christmas movie nights that *require* a fun dessert. I forget the joys of fellowship and immediately become consumed with the pressure to create, concoct, and cater.
From beginning to end, the Bible unpacks this tension we feel in our holiday feasting. God created us with the ability to see and taste and savor different foods, both for our sustenance and enjoyment. It’s the reason a bite of chocolate cake can instantly take us back to our childhood visits to grandma’s house or why receiving a beloved family recipe is an honor. When God created the earth, he placed Adam and Eve in a garden with foods that would sustain them and fuel their bodies.[1] There was no calorie-counting, no food pyramids, no trans fats, no preservatives. There was no looking at the month’s meal plan or grocery budget and feeling shoulders tense up . . . that is, until sin entered the world with a bite of—you guessed it—food.[2]
In God’s grace, though, food after the fall is still a good gift we can taste and enjoy. In fact, we see in Scripture that the Lord uses it often for remembrance and thanksgiving. When the Israelites fled Egypt, God first called them to a meal of remembrance.[3] During Jesus’s time on earth, he put God’s glory on display through acts like feeding 5,000 people with just five loaves and two fish[4] and turning water to wine.[5] Before he journeyed to the cross, Jesus took the time to sit with his disciples and have a meal of bread and wine, saying: “This is my body, which is given for you. Do this in remembrance of me” (Luke 22:19).
When we stop to think about the ways God uses food as a daily grace to us, it reminds us just how much he loves his children. Food can soften conversations and teach us about new cultures. It’s a beautiful thread that weaves through times of grief and celebration, busyness and rest, and across all of history. Because of God’s kindness to us, a world filled with sin still makes room for a world where we can see glimpses of heaven through a joyful table and a good meal.
But in a world filled with sin, food—maybe even especially during the holidays—doesn’t always bring warm and fuzzy feelings. In addition to the little mouths we’re responsible for feeding, we’re often adding extended family left and right in these winter months, increasing our grocery bills, filling up our refrigerators, and maxing out our calendars. And when days of feasting finally come, we may be chasing toddlers around non-babyproofed houses, scooping cold bites into our mouths here and there, halfway engaging in conversation while meeting our children’s pressing needs, and the list goes on. Our picture-perfect vision of beautiful bowls passed around the table with nothing but smiles shatters as we feel the weight of real life and real motherhood in a fallen world. Expectations have a powerful way of taking the joy around the table and twisting it until we believe there’s no joy in serving others at all . . . that our work yields no fruit.
But friend, the incarnation reminds us that, through Jesus, our work bears so much fruit.[6] When we shift our eyes from recipe cards and grocery bills to the One who created both us and the feast before us, we’re allowed to eat and remember: God came to us.
Whether we’re shuffling in with break-and-bake cookies or our most prized family recipe, we have the privilege of helping our friends at the table eat and remember that the Lord is faithful to his people. We give the offering—he bears the fruit. In a season where the needs are great and our capacity feels so very small, it’s a sweet gift that Christ—our true Provision—meets us right where we are.
This holiday season, what would it look like for us to eat and remember?
When we burn the cake and resort to store-bought cupcakes at the last minute, eat and remember that nothing we could ever say, do, or bake could ever earn us standing before God—only Christ can.
When our menu plans must flex around allergies and preferences, eat and remember that loving others well shows them a picture of Christ’s deep love for us.
When the kids are over-sugared and under-rested at Grandma’s house, eat and remember that there is “a time to weep, and a time to laugh; a time to mourn, and a time to dance” (Eccl. 3:4).
When guilt seeps in because we side-stepped our diet for the day, eat and remember that there is grace for us in Christ, and “this world is passing away along with its desires, but whoever does the will of God abides forever” (1 John 2:17).
When our toddlers recoil at Aunt Martha’s fruit cake and we sustain them on drive-thru chicken nuggets for a day, eat and remember that though we often reject God’s provision because it’s not what we wanted, he is still patient and faithful.
And when the meal goes perfectly, the food is delicious, and the table is filled with nothing but joy and laughter, eat and remember that this is the slightest glimpse of heaven, pointing us forward to a greater day when we’ll eat at the King’s table and experience joy everlasting.
This holiday season, let’s be free to prepare joyfully. Because Christ laid down his life for the joy that laid before him,[7] we can take what the world calls stressful and ‘not worth it’ and serve our friends and family with a love that runs far deeper. Like the lamb and unleavened bread, the loaves and fish, and the bread and wine, so the food that sits before us this holiday season is one way God reminds us that he is the ultimate Provider and Sustainer, and he is always, always faithful.
[1] Genesis 2:8-9
[2] Genesis 3:6
[3] Exodus 12:1-14
[4] John 6:1-14
[5] John 2:6-11
[6] Colossians 1:9-11
[7] Hebrews 12:2