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I already know what you’re thinking.

“Not another article on ‘marriage’? You gotta be kidding me!”

Am I right? I know exactly how you feel. Many couples I sit with each week are totally exhausted. In fact, once I hear their story of going from pastor to pastor, counselor to counselor, I'm amazed they are willing to even talk to me. I'm just one more guy who sits and listens and then wonders where to begin. 

So here's where I begin. 

In late June of 1991, Newsweek magazine published what would quickly become one of their all-time best-selling weekly copies. They literally flew off the newsstands. They could not print enough of them. You want to guess what the title on the front cover said? Here it is: “Drums, Sweat and Tears -- What Do Men Really Want? -- Now They Have a Movement of Their Own.”

That June 24^th edition went on to elaborate in detail what was happening in “masculine America” as a result of an astounding PBS special hosted by Bill Moyers entitled, “A Gathering of Men.” The program was a profound documentary on the poet Robert Bly and his new book, Iron John, which went on to spend 30 weeks on the best-seller list, a stunning and remarkable achievement by any author writing on the subject of critical issues among men.

What caught my eye as I read the entire series of articles was a small box off in the bottom right-hand side of one page that many men told me they totally missed. It was entitled “The New Man Talk.”

It has been over twenty-five years ago since one of my favorite mentors, Chuck Swindoll, wrote these words in one of his original “Think It Over” columns that he had printed and distributed in his Sunday church bulletin. I was fortunate enough to be on the church’s mailing list so I would get a copy each month. I will never forget opening my mail and reading what I believe is one of his very best all-time pieces of writing. I just found it over the holidays tucked away in my files.

“Goodbye Christmas… Goodbye New Years… Goodbye sanity!”

That’s actually what a friend of mine said to me this past weekend when I merely asked him, “How were your holidays?” In fact, he admitted that he says that every year. When I asked him “why?”, he didn’t even take a breath before he blurted out, “Because it’s so true and it helps bring me back to reality from what the world does to me at this time every year!”

I thought to myself, “Wow, he’s right. But at least he’s honest.”

Then my next thought was, “Maybe that’s what I need to do now that we are into January 2015. I need to come back to reality.”

You may think I’m weird (many already know that), but there’s something I do every Christmas. Every single year. And I get the same result every year.

About three weeks before Christmas, at the beginning of “Advent” (you can tell I was raised Lutheran, which was a really good thing), I’ll be driving in my car listening to the radio or passing a billboard sign or shopping in a store, and I will play a little game I invented years ago. I pretend that I have never ever heard of Christmas before. (I told you I was weird). I try to imagine that I came from another planet and that this is the very first Christmas I have ever experienced. And then, I look and listen to everything around me and I begin to ask myself this one key question: “So…what’s the real message of this holiday we call ‘Christmas’? What’s all the hype?”