Expecting better from Christians at Christmas is a bridge too far.

The holiday rental with the rotten potatoes.

There are a lot of reasons people reject Jesus Christ. Having followed him since I was a young girl, I can’t always understand those reasons with complete empathy but I can understand them from a clinical point of view.

By now, I’ve had enough moments in life to be glad I’ve walked with Jesus long enough and that my parents and Christian adults in church modeled faith in a way that I can trust a Heavenly Father and not base my faith on how others who also lay claim to the faith behave. Gandhi once said that he “liked your Christ but not your Christianity.” When the world sees our Savior and then sees the awfulness of the people laying claim to him, I guess I get it.

The pastors who lie and fire you and get ahead. The adoption of worldly techniques to try to grow a church on their own strength and skills without the Holy Spirit. The Jesus jargon used to sell Jesus-junk products. Kenneth Copeland.

I won’t lie: there’s a reason I don’t put any Christian bumper stickers on my car. It’s not just because dad said putting stickers on your car is a bad idea, either. I know how I drive sometimes. I don’t want to take my Heavenly Father’s name in vain.¹

Too often, there’s an inverse relationship to believers who decorate themselves, their homes, and their lives with Christian paraphernalia and how much kindness they show. You could skip the Jesus junk and outward trappings if you just show kindness and consideration, if you go out of your way to turn the other cheek and exercise extravagant generosity and gentleness. But bumper stickers are easier I guess.

Some of you have read about my family’s 2020 (Black Hills) and 2022 (Minnesota) Christmases.

2020 was the Covid Christmas in which we started a new tradition as a family and rented a cabin in the Black Hills and have several hilarious stories to come from it including one involving, no joke, rabies. There was no snow in the hills except for a strange little winter storm that happened right in the area of the rental house.

2022 was the year we rented Tettegouche Lodge in Minnesota and managed to squeak in during the early start of a blizzard and had probably one of the best Christmases we’ll have as a family. We went nuts for the Finnish sauna and turned that driveway into a sledding luge and the owners, two women who turned out to be super-friendly and accommodating, probably had many good laughs and possibly insurance concerns when they looked at their outdoor Ring camera footage.

As a family, we’re operating under the understanding that there is no guarantee that everyone will be with us the next time Christmas rolls around.

Just last year, between Christmas and the New Year, my brother basically died. Through the kindness and miraculous hand of God, he is still with us today. I didn’t talk about it much then and probably won’t say more than that, but it is clear we do not know our time on this earth.

So we have these family get-togethers because earthly lives are precious and fleeting, even though we understand the line from the Christmas Vacation movie where she informs her husband that it’s “Christmas and we’re all miserable.” That’s just what happens with a lot of people and personalities crammed into one space. The miserable is soon forgotten as we remember it with laughs.²

This year, knowing again it could be the last time we’re all together, we rented a house via Airbnb in the Black Hills near Spearfish. This story was a bit different. I won’t post photos or identifying information because I’m not trying to hurt the owner’s business. Suffice it to say the listing seemed like a perfect fit.

A few of us arrived early, just after 1 p.m. or so. Ultimately, based on the description of the house that showed bedrooms with rooms packed with beds that were described as a particular size, our group was going to be 24 human beings. But we would all fit based on the photos.

We walked into an absolute messy disaster. I’ve never seen clutter like that—papers, boxes, socks and underwear on the floor—my own bedroom doesn’t even look like that. All of previous Airbnb/VRBO rentals were very different, and I was literally shocked. It as then that we realized this was a home someone was living in, something that wasn’t mentioned in the Airbnb ad, something that would definitely have caused us to look elsewhere had we known.

The owner, a man standing in the kitchen, was friendly but maybe a bit frantic, and so we left and told him we’d come back at 3 p.m., the official check-in time. He gave us $60 cash to go buy toilet paper and paper towels at Walmart while he continued to pack up his stuff to go over to another of his properties to spend Christmas while we were in his house.

It was weird.

But this is the worst part for me: I saw a print of Jesus’ face hanging above a doorway and I saw there were Christian books sitting around on end tables. Instead of feeling joy that we’d be staying in a believer’s home, my heart sank.

I hope this guy isn’t a jerk, I thought.

Bold proclamations of Jesus Christ through outward stuff and that inverse relationship I mentioned earlier—I was very wary. Avoiding the words always and never, I will say that the percentage is pretty high in my life experience for being treated with godly hospitality in homes of people who are not believers, but the opposite is true for believers.

It is the cousins who are into New Age who showered me and my friends with ridiculous hospitality and access to their home while the Christian friends refused to let me sleep in a basement when I had no where to go and I ended up a little bit homeless in my vehicle for a while until I secured strange housing. While I won’t list all the experiences, there are many and I remember them clearly because it’s incongruent.

What would a non-believer think about those experiences, that the more outward and Jesus-y a person was, the higher the chance they were going to be tight-fisted and inhospitable?

I just knew that this Christmas rental was going to be different than the previous two. That, combined with seeing the original mess so close to check-in and hearing washing machines still running. How could a large house be properly cleaned in two hours from this state?

The answer is that it can’t be.

In college, I helped a friend clean houses to earn extra money. When I worked at a startup, I cleaned the office and bathrooms on the weekend to earn extra money. I worked in a small bakery and know what cleaning standards are. I’ve stayed at enough hotels and hostels and homes around the country and the world, including VRBO and Airbnb, to know what a properly cleaned facility is when you have paying guests. When guests come to stay at my house, regardless of who they are, it’s full-on vacuuming, clean sheets, cleaned and sanitized bathrooms—the whole nine yards. And I’m not even renting it out.

When we returned at 3 p.m., the clutter was pretty much gone but we found rotting, dripping potatoes in the pantry that we had to remove, clean up after, and then try to get the smell out.

We realized he’d left boxes and boxes of personal and business papers stacked in a bathroom and kitchen cabinet that anyone could get into, papers that contained private information that could have led to identity theft for him or his business clients had we been people inclined to dig through them.

A properly cleaned rental facility should not have urine and fecal drops dried to the toilet or under the rim, nor should there be pubic hairs or other hairs. The sinks should not have wet rag smears that pushed soap and toothpaste scum around instead of removed it. There should not be a used tube of toothpaste on the counter. There should not still be laundry in the washer and dryer when the paid guests arrive. The unused bedrooms downstairs should be cleared of the cobwebs and the bedding refreshed.

We’re not talking about a general cleaning good enough for you, personally, in your home. We’re talking about a solid cleaning appropriate for paid guests renting a facility based on a contract which included high fees to cover a proper cleaning.

“This place hasn’t been properly cleaned,” I said, noting things I was seeing to my sister.

“My house isn’t very clean,” she said as she washed the counter.

“Yes, but you’re not taking money from people to live in it,” I pointed out.

“That’s true,” she said.

My sister worked at cleaning in the pantry, dealing with the rotten potatoes. I cleaned the toilets, lifting the seats and spraying and wiping down the everything with cleaning products and making the unseen areas clean from dried drips and splats. I cleaned the sinks, the bathroom and kitchen counters, and swept the dirt and dust from under the tables and chairs. I wanted my family to feel like they were deserving of a fresh, clean home to enjoy for Christmas.

We struggled to find pots and pans to use, and made lists of things to run into town and buy. Most Airbnb listings tell you what you’ll find in the kitchen and elsewhere in the house. We found a towel we realized hadn’t been washed and collected bedding that was in the closet and had to do more laundry just to get everyone set up with bedding and towels.

We realized the beds were not as large as their frames and what they appeared on line. By the time we left many days later, everyone was exhausted from poor sleep and scrambling to find a place for everyone to fit.

“Are you going to write a review of this place?” one of my nieces asked me. She is aware that, if I choose to, I can eviscerate with the written word.³

“I don’t know. I’ll have to pray about that,” I said, hoping we could talk to the owner about our concerns and work things out to everyone’s satisfaction. I thought it was right to let other renters know what to expect, but I didn’t want to destroy a business.

The view was nice. The house was a new build and was nice (though whoever hung the doors downstairs needs a refresher course). There were hiking trails nearby. The home owner had extensive property and was friendly enough to tell us where to hike to see his in-progress tree house up the hill. My sister and her daughter-in-law had planned fun games and we had plenty of Christmas goodies to snack on.

But that image of Jesus hung above the door and looked at us and I felt an annoyance because of course this was the experience we had with the one overt Christian rental owner out of the three Christmases we’d done this.

After we’d all traveled home, my sister sent a nice email to the owner and outlined our concerns while also complimenting his properties, making some suggestions on being a bit more honest in the Airbnb listing, suggesting he note that he lived there because many people don’t want to rent out a home someone regularly lives in. He said he would update the listing. He thanked her for how clean the house was after we left it, and that we wouldn’t be charged the fee you get nailed with if you don’t follow the rules of the home owner and leave the house as they request.

Yes. We did leave it in better shape than we found it. Isn’t that what we should do as Christians in this world?

Wherever we go, whatever we touch, whoever we meet—it should be better afterwards than before we arrived. At the very least, it shouldn’t be worse. We should exceed the world’s kindness, thoughtfulness, hospitality, and generosity. By this they will know we are followers of Christ.

She then replied that we’d been charged all the full fees.⁴ We’d hoped he would refund a little bit of the built-in cleaning fee considering we’d had to spend the first few hours cleaning. We are not a rich family, not a single one of us. Paying our share of the rental was a hardship for many, saving up and pooling it together to pay for the expensive rental. To have to clean it and do laundry upon arrival was kind of a slap in the face.

When we walked into those other two Christmas rentals, I suspect family members felt like I did. For once, we weren’t the family with the hand-me-down clothes, the extra job to make ends meet, the servers and the cleaners and the grunts, the ones with the old cars and leaky roofs. We had paid the rental fee and got to experience what it was like to live in such a fancy home, cleaned up and prepared as good as it would for anyone else.

This Christmas we had to be the cleaners and grunts and still got the full bill, from a fellow Christian no less.

How did he respond to her?

“A cleaning fee is standard and it would have been listed when you booked. I checked the toilets and they were clean. We have 2 sets of bedding and towels so set out what I felt you would need and put the rest in the closet. These were all clean so did not need washing again. I believe there was a set of towels in the dryer. As I think I said, my normal cleaning person was not available and with the holidays it was next to impossible to get anyone so did most of it myself. I'll reiterate, the toilets were clean... Time to move on.”

I’ll reiterate, the toilets weren’t clean, though maybe they were to a single man. I know what a clean toilet looks like; I’ve cleaned them enough. And having us do laundry upon arrival is beyond the pale for the price we paid.

If you’re a follower of Jesus Christ and put Christian books and pictures on the wall and leave out little Gideon New Testaments—be better. What if we weren’t believers? What if we’d seen all the Jesus junk and then received this email response? I can promise you others would leave a seriously nasty review and report him to Airbnb, and definitely have another reason to dislike Christians.

Here was a man who has oodles of businesses and properties, likely more money than I’ll ever see in my life. Why snap back? Why choose a worldly standard (“I met the rules and expectations of Airbnb”) over a godly standard (“people matter more than money and I’m going to make it right for you in a gentle manner”)?

One of my favorite movies is the 2015 remake of Cinderella. While it seems simplistic, the takeaway phrase says it all: have courage and be kind.

Kindness is hard.

It feels like weakness, like turning the other cheek in a world demanding you fight for your rights and give no one quarter and gain whatever it takes to get ahead. It takes courage just to be kind.

We were a family that tried hard to have a special four-generations Christmas, sacrificed money, traveled, and could have just used some basic kindness instead of being told by a fellow Christian to “move on.”

I hope you’ll join me, for 2025, in pursuing kindness and grace, and responding to hurt, anger, and complaint with an overflow of love and generosity in a way that—in this world of anger and economic struggle and scarcity and fighting to get ahead—they will have their breath taken away by how you’ve modeled Christ. It’s not about pandering to brokenness⁵, but seeing beneath it all and showing godly kindness that could lead to Christ.

Remember, we have a Heavenly Father who made it all and owns it all.

We can afford to be ridiculously generous in both our material possessions and our emotional responses because he will always take care of us and we will never lack. He is an artesian well, always springing up and filling what was given or taken.

I’ve no doubt, knowing my family and our sense of humor, that we’ll be joking about this Christmas in due time, though this might be the last family holiday. I hope the owner of the home enjoys and employs the money we paid him, and that the Lord blesses his business and leads him towards increased graciousness going forward.

(pause.)

(ahem.)

But also, dude, I can still write a review (with photos) that will light your pants on fire so step off. I mean that graciously.

1. Though opinions vary, I don’t think that commandment is about swearing. There’s plenty about uncouth talk elsewhere, particularly in the New Testament. Instead, I believe God is saying that when we take on his name and identify as followers of Christ, we had better live it and not tarnish his name by how we behave and treat people. His name is great and powerful. If our behavior and life is so bad that someone would associate that with who God is and choose to reject him, that is despicable.

2. I don’t think it’s wise to make the pursuit of “making memories” as the end goal; it’s something that should be a by-product of a well-lived life. But that’s a blog post for another day. The point is that each moment has the opportunity to create a memory, good or bad, and we can’t always wrangle it to what we want.

3. I’m not proud of it, but our strengths become weakness and mine is words. I once wrote a Starbucks review in such a way that the next visit brought the manager out from behind the counter. He kneeled down in front of me (thought he was going to propose for a moment, so awkward) and begged forgiveness.

4. You get a cleaning fee for the cleaning done to prepare the property, and then, if you don’t clean up after yourself before leaving, get a cleaning penalty fee. Honestly, I prefer hotels. With larger family groups, though, hotels are tricky. Tettegouche Lodge was very professionally run and an amazing facility. I cannot recommend it enough.

5. Next week we’ll be talking about being triggered.