Edwin Leap loves the holidays, especially the “most wonderful” celebrations of Easter and Christmas. In “Holidays & Holy Days,” the author, from the perspective of a devoted family man and emergency room physician, offers his take on the two most important days on the Christian calendar.
Leap giddily admits to falling victim to the trappings and traditions of the holidays, but he goes beyond the tinsel and colored eggs to remind the reader of the great truth that undergirds the celebrations of Easter and Christmas: that God became man in order to rescue a lost world. God’s outpouring of grace, he writes, is for all — not just the well-dressed and well-behaved, but also the meth addict, the money-launderer and the one masking her depression with pills.
Here are his reflections on Easter and Christmas — on meals together and prayers together, on giving and receiving gifts. On God and man, and Jesus and incarnation, on life and death and all the rest of the wonderful things that one can see and learn from those most wonderful holidays and holy days.
Leap lives in Tamassee, South Carolina, with his college-sweetheart wife, Jan, and their four brilliant, good-looking children: Sam, Seth, Elijah and Elysa. His home is also beset with five dogs and three cats and all sorts of other creatures in the woods adjacent. He writes a monthly column, “Wholly Healthy,” for The Baptist Courier. He also writes regular columns for the Greenville News and for a national medical publication, Emergency Medicine News. When he isn’t writing or enjoying his family, he works as an emergency physician in various hospitals across South Carolina and several other states.
Leap and his family attend Life-Point Church in Seneca, South Carolina. He wishes every day could be Christmas or Easter. (He also hopes to be Santa Claus someday, but maybe a slightly thinner version.)
“Holidays & Holy Days” is also available as an e-book beginning Dec. 1 at major online providers.
