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, in 1972 and 2012.

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, round, 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 between the date for the annual Glory's Place fundraiser and her Christmas season anniversary).

The news of Lauren's pregnancy spurs her friends at Glory's Place to redecorate and furnish her and Travis' house for the arriving baby. Miriam is able to negotiate a good price on a round black walnut kitchen table (which Larry, the store owner, purchased at a garage sale and refinished). Travis notices that the table has a drawer, when he opens it he finds a stack of handwritten recipe cards (Larry bought the table years prior so he does not know who the prior owner was; thus they can't return them). The discovery spurs something within Lauren: having never had any real family meals with her neglecting (and ultimately abandoning) parents, and very few while in foster care, she wants to begin cooking and having real family meals. She uses Andrea as a sounding board for her ideas (Andrea tells her that she isn't stupid for thinking about it, and her family would always have breakfast and dinner together, even if the time had to be changed due to children's activities).

Lauren begins to make several of the meals on the cards. She discovers that she is actually a very good cook (even secretly providing desserts for the volunteers at Glory's Place) and asks Gloria about teaching cooking classes there. She notices that a few of the cards mention a dairy farmer named Bud; she decides to track him down, to see if he may know who owned the cards previously. Ultimately she is able to track him down; he doesn't recognize the handwriting but notices a picture of who he remembers as Gigi.

At a dinner party, the two time sequences are linked: the Gigi of 1972 is, in fact, the Andrea of 2002 (that was her name in childhood, but she didn't like it, so when she got older she made people stop using it), and John and Joan are her parents (and have come to town to visit; Joan survived her 1972 bout with cancer). Andrea recognizes the recipe cards and the table: the table was accidentally sold in a moving sale and thought to be lost.

But one final reunion awaits: Larry comes over with some boxes for the upcoming Glory's Place fundraiser; John recognizes him as the same Larry who he met in the hospital 40 years earlier. Joan tells Larry that their meeting led both of them on a search to discover God and Jesus. Lauren returns the recipe cards and the table to Andrea; in return, John and Larry agree to furnish a new table for Lauren and Travis.

At the fundraiser, Lauren goes into labor and ultimately gives birth to a baby girl, who she names Gloria Miriam ("Glory"), after the bickering best friends who run Glory's Place. Miss Glory announces that she knew Lauren was the secret dessert provider, and that when she returns to volunteering she can begin teaching cooking classes as they will be installing a small kitchen.

The final chapter ends the sequences: in the 2012 sequence Travis, Lauren and Glory see John and Larry's new black walnut table for Christmas, while in the 1972 sequence Joan and the children discover that John (with the help of Ed Grassle) has finished their table (John having "paid it forward" by assisting Larry).