Christians, especially of the Reformed species, don’t often do a good job of celebrating. We are good at self-reflection and somberness. We are good at staring into suffering and acknowledging sin. But we don’t do so with much hope; we often focus so much on our sorrow over sin that we forget to celebrate who A Reason to Celebrate God is and what He has done in our lives. For example, as a pastor, I’ve been guilty A Reason to Celebrate of turning the Lord’s Supper, a time of historic celebration in the Church, into a sad, melancholy practice.But if you know anything about Church history, you know that it hasn’t always been this way. How has the Church historically combated this drive toward lament and contemplativeness? The answer may surprise you: They used the Church Calendar.We often focus so much on our sorrow over sin that we forget to celebrate who God is and what He has done in our lives.Most of us orient our lives around a calendar whether we realize it or not. This calendar tends to be either the school calendar, for those of us with school-age kids, or a bevy of secular or secularized holidays. How many of us have thought, “If I can just make it to Thanksgiving,” or “Starting in the new year”? Our lives are informed, planned around and shaped by this annual cycle.But what if instead we oriented our lives around God’s redemptive story by celebrating and contemplating the gospel? Our entire lives would be shaped and formed by God’s story. Imagine how our lives would be a testimony to our children, coworkers and neighbors if we planned dinners and holidays and celebrations around the seasons of the Church Calendar. Celebrating Pentecost is one way we could do just that, and I would argue that the result will be life-altering.The Church Calendar orders life in such a way that the people of God spend seasons reflecting and seasons celebrating, seasons fasting and seasons feasting. Through this rhythm, the Church can avoid becoming imbalanced, acknowledging its sinfulness and suffering while celebrating that God did not leave His people alone in their sin. Whereas Lent is a season of reflection, Pentecost ……

While I’m not one to tell people what to do, I will say this anyway: You need to celebrate stuff every day. Intentionally seeking things to celebrate on a daily basis increases your sense of wellbeing and your life satisfaction. Finding or creating things to celebrate, even if they are minuscule, is a way of making a good life lived in moments (as opposed to chaotic chunks). Identify the good and taking a moment (or multiple moments) to celebrate it shifts your perspective in a positive direction and infuses your life with a sense of meaning.Celebrating means doing even quick, little things to acknowledge something positive. It helps you internalize the good rather than taking it for granted and just rushing onto the next thing. We actually have to learn to do this and practice it regularly.The human brain has a negativity bias. Human beings naturally focus on the negative and discount the positive, which leads to anxiety, depression, stress, reduced mental health and wellbeing, and an overall sense of unhappiness in life. This began as a survival mechanism, but it wore out its welcome thousands of years ago. Yet it hangs on. This is why it’s important to shake the negativity bias lose by celebrating the positive.The human A Reason to Celebrate brain is made to celebrate. Reactions to your celebrations are built into the neurochemistry of your brain. When you do something positive on purpose to celebrate something within you or around you, the brain responds by activating its own reward center. It releases a feel-good hormone called dopamine. You are flooded with positive emotions and feel energized. Basically, the brain is doing its very own happy dance in response to yours. (Of course “you” and “your brain” aren’t separate. You’re an intricate system that dances as one.)Your celebrations of the positive things in life and brain’s dopamine response can play a seemingly infinite tennis volley. You seek the good and celebrate it, serving it to your brain’s reward center which then returns the shot with positive emotions. The positivity you experience impacts your thoughts, feelings, and actions, and you do more of what works, which in this cas……

A Reason to Celebrate“Yes!” I thought when I found this brave little challenge in the sea of productivity and negativity complaints. Here’s a person, I thought, who is not out to brainwash and slave-drive her coworkers. But to refresh and entertain!I was excited because she and I have the same passion. I am not looking to bore people to death with stale ideas A Reason to Celebrate either. I am here to make sure you have a good time.Where do ideas come from? If every time I had to write a blog post, I went searching for topics on the Internet, I would get bored. Luckily, I don’t have to do that. Because people like her kindly answer the questions I pose on our site. So, as of today, I have 10,000+ ideas ready to go.This makes me wonder if our In-house Events Coordinator has ever asked her people for ideas. I can’t imagine they would turn her down if she did. They could, however, give her ideas that don’t match her own. Starting with the word “fresh.”Who says we must always chase after new thrills? Maybe your employees are nostalgic about something A Reason to Celebrate from the past. Or perhaps they look forward to the same old Christmas party and the same old company picnic year after year. You never know until you ask.A favorite tradition at one of my past jobs was the monthly lunch at a local Chinese buffet. Trust me, there was nothing fresh about that. But, the bonding we’ve felt over these meals was magical. Had management wanted to score big points with us, they wouldn’t have had to invent anything new. All they had to do was to occasionally sponsor our all-you-can-eat lunches.Entertainment always sounds good. But are you sure it’s a priority at the moment? Maybe, before people can come out of their shells, they need to air their grievances, heal old wounds, or allay their fears.If you knew what was on people’s minds, you could create an event that spoke to their needs. How fresh is that! Maybe you could have an “ask-a-burning-question” event to fact-check the rumors. Or a “bury the hatchet” event to reconcile an office feud.My favorite events are the ones that are pure joy and celebration and a complete break from the office routine. Many problems will solve themsel……