For many, the Christmas season can be filled with distractions and anxiety rather than the joy and peace it is supposed to bring. In The Christmas Spirit, his first holiday book, Joel Osteen offers uplifting and inspiring stories of family and friends celebrating Christmas traditions that will help readers return to the essence of the holiday by practicing the principles taught by our Savior, Jesus Christ, whose birth we celebrate that day. With these stories, Joel reminds us all of what is truly important in life. Filled with humorous and compelling holiday memories from Joel’s family and friends, this heartwarming collection will inspire and amuse readers while enhancing their faith in God’s goodness and eternal wisdom. The stories in The Christmas Spirit reflect that this Christian holiday is a celebration of family: God’s family, our own, and the diverse global family. Friends and families from near and far share faith and Christmas traditions: They laugh together. They grieve together. They support each other. They offer proof that the best way to overcome hurt and loneliness is to reach out to others who may be hurting and lonely, too. Joel’s unique stories and memories will encourage readers to savor their own Christmas memories, to share them with loved ones, and to create new memories and traditions that will be passed down for generations to come. For those feeling stressed, hurt, or lacking direction this holiday season, these heartwarming stories will serve as a healing balm and a guiding light to a more hopeful and peaceful holiday. Over the past decade, Joel Osteen has been called the Most Influential Christian in America by numerous publications and, in 2006, was named one of Barbara Walters’s Most Fascinating People. Hailed as “America’s voice of hope,” Joel Osteen is one of the most respected pastors in America. Each week 43,000 people attend his worship services at Lakewood Church in Houston, and his weekly inspirational program is seen by more than 7 million television viewers across America, along with tens of millions more in 200 nations throughout the world. This new book of stories from family and friends about Christmas will be cherished by readers everywhere. This very slim volume is the ideal stocking stuffer for admirers of Osteen, bestselling author and senior pastor of Lakewood Church in Houston. In it, he recalls family memories of growing up in Texas with his parents, siblings, and grandparents, and fondly remembers unique holiday rituals.Whenever the Osteen clan gathers during the holidays, they often talk about family history, something that Osteen encourages his readers to do as well. Putting a positive spin on even dark memories, he mentions his late father’s modest upbringing, picking cotton as a youngster on his own father’s farm until it was lost during the Depression. Despite the hard times, his father, Osteen emphasizes, had a happy childhood. The lessons conveyed here are nothing earth shattering—to do good on this earth, help families in need, offer the gift of service to others—but his humble stories are wrapped with Christmas warmth and goodwill. A fine addition for holiday shelves. --June Sawyers The Christmas Spirit CHAPTER ONE Our Father’s Gift We enjoyed the usual Christmas traditions growing up, but like most families, we had our own unique holiday rituals. The Osteen kids, all five of us, slept under and around the Christmas tree on the night before Christmas, telling stories and laughing and trying to guess what gifts we might be getting until we’d finally fall asleep. Still, we celebrated Christmas Day a bit differently from many families. For us it was really a big birthday party because my father and mother emphasized the holiday’s Christian origins as the birthday of baby Jesus, God’s perfect present to us. If ever there were a gift that keeps on giving, it was this one. We did exchange Christmas gifts like most families. We laughed and carried on through huge dinners of turkey and all the fixings. One thing we didn’t do, though, was eggnog. Instead, real early Christmas morning while our parents were still nestled all snug in their bed, the Osteen boys and girls climbed out of our sleeping bags and made home brew—coffee, that is. I probably should explain to you first off that caffeine runs in our family’s blood. We were a coffee-drinking bunch before Starbucks ever ground its first bean. Every one of us started drinking it at a young age because of our dad, a pastor who started each day with a Bible in one hand and a mug of strong coffee in the other. Dad’s morning coffee was his little taste of heaven on earth. Each day, he shuffled out of bed and headed to the coffee pot first thing. Before he shaved, showered, or dressed, he had to down at least one mug of good old Folgers “mountain grown, the richest kind of coffee,” as the commercials said back then. Our father, John Osteen, didn’t just drink his morning mug of coffee;