December 1, 2025 | Dr. Don Payne
In this Christmas episode of Engage360, Dr. Don Payne challenges the cultural assumption that Christmas should be a universally joyful time, exploring how many experience loneliness, loss, and pain during the season. He argues that those who are suffering aren’t on the margins of Christmas but actually stand at its very center, since Christ’s incarnation was about entering our brokenness to redeem us. Dr. Payne also examines how commercialization and sentimentalism can obscure the true meaning of Christmas—God’s humble, redemptive act of taking up residence in a broken world.
Drawing on both the film Home Alone and his own experience of holding joy alongside grief for lost loved ones, he reminds listeners that the incarnation of Jesus allows us to occupy both spaces without tension, offering hope to everyone regardless of their circumstances.