The Christmas Table (book)

The Christmas Table is a Christian novel written by Donna VanLiere. It was published in 2020.

It is the eleventh novel in her Christmas series, all but one of which features the residents of the fictional community of Grandon.^[1]

The book is set in a parallel time sequence, the sequences covering the same period (May through Christmas Day) 40 years apart.

The older sequence takes place in 1972 and features the Creighton family (husband John, wife Joan, and children Gigi and Christopher). John, a novice woodworker, is taking on an ambitious project: make a custom-made black walnut kitchen table by October. Meanwhile, Joan (with the help of her children) is learning to cook from handwritten recipe cards given to her by her mother.

Both projects, though, are continually delayed by Joan's being diagnosed with an aggressive form of breast cancer, requiring several chemotherapy treatments and at least two surgeries. The Creightons are not a religious family, but ultimately are led to seek God and Jesus through three divine interventions:

• First, John meets Larry, who is also a woodworker, while visiting Joan after her first surgery. Larry recognizes the power of God to heal (mentioning his own mother, who turned 72 but was given only two months to live when she was 32, but recognizes that not all are healed, his own grandfather passing at age 60) and says he learned that from recognizing Creation in a seed and the wood. The meeting gives John the courage to tell Joan to think that "today's the day" she will be healed.
• Next, during a chemo session, Joan meets Bruce (a young man who is also a chemo patient) and his mother (later shown to be named Ronnie). Ronnie is also saying the same phrase, "today's the day", giving Joan more optimism.
• Lastly, when John is starting to doubt, Ed Grassle (from a nearby church) comes to visit him. Ed also likes to dabble in woodworking. Ed offers his family's assistance in whatever John and Joan need during this time.

The newer sequence takes place in 2012 and features the continuing story of Lauren Mabrey.^[2] Having lived in Grandon for around a year and a half and married to Travis for six months, she continues to volunteer at Glory's Place where she meets a new volunteer, Andrea King (a middle-aged woman with one child in college and the other a high-school senior, who now has more time to volunteer). Lauren has been ill for several days, which she blames on "supermarket sushi"; Andrea suspects another cause which turns out to be correct: Lauren is pregnant (and later learns that her due date is around her anniversary).

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