Podcast Summary: “It’s Christmas. Please don’t ask me about Christmas. OK, ask me.”

Podcast: Becoming You with Suzy Welch
Host: Suzy Welch, NYU Stern Professor
Date: December 23, 2025

Episode Overview

This Christmas-themed episode delves into the complexities of faith as a personal value, especially during the holiday season. Suzy Welch—professor, journalist, and self-described “values agnostic”—reflects on the “emotional minefield” of Christmas as someone whose top value is faith (what her Becoming You methodology calls “Cosmos”). She explores the tension between secular and faithful celebrations, candidly shares her personal faith journey, and advocates for compassionate understanding of each other's values, whatever they may be.

Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Christmas: A Gift and an Emotional Minefield

• Suzy opens with her hallmark irreverence and warmth, using Christmas music and humor to segue into the true subject: why Christmas is emotionally challenging for her.
• She admits to both “losing her mind in a really good way, and a really bad way” at Christmas (00:26).
• Core thesis: For Suzy, and many like her, Christmas highlights the tension between a meaningful religious celebration and the overwhelming secular, Santa-focused festivities.

2. The “Becoming You” Methodology and Values Inventory

• Brief explanation of her research-based framework used by over 250,000 people, centered on defining aptitudes, interests, and values (03:10).
• Preview of the Becoming You Values Inventory: a list of 16 life-organizing principles. Includes common values (family, achievement) and some less common (eudaimonia, non sibi).
• Focus value for this episode: “Cosmos” (faith—not any specific religion, but the belief in a higher power).
• Data point: 30% list “Cosmos” in their top five values, 52% in their bottom five, making it a uniquely “barbell” value (05:56).

3. Values Agnostic, Personally Devout

• Suzy stresses that Becoming You is “values agnostic”: all values are valid so long as they don’t harm others.
• Irony: As a Christian, “Cosmos” is her number one value, yet she almost excluded faith from the survey out of concern it would be divisive or “freak out the non-Cosmos people” (06:58).
• Focus groups showed people from many faiths wanted faith included, regardless of denomination.

4. The Secular/Religious Christmas Divide

• For faithful people, Christmas is “about the birth of the person on whom your entire faith is founded.” For the majority, it's “a massive gift-giving event with Santa as the main character” (08:09).
• Suzy describes the exhausting emotional work of holding both these realities and keeping her faith “pretty silently” to maintain harmony in secular settings.

Memorable Family Anecdote:

• Suzy plays a clip of her granddaughter and her first husband excitedly discussing Santa.
• She confesses how she holds back interjecting her religious views:
  • “You catch me there at the end saying, ‘you know, wait, what happens at Christmas?’ But then I drop it right there because I have spent so much of my life doing exactly that.” (09:49)
• Tells of her mother preferring the “music, not all the religious stuff” in Christmas Eve services, juxtaposed with Suzy’s own powerful religious association (10:45).

5. On Not Proselytizing—and the Challenge of Silence

• Suzy grapples with the desire to advocate for her own top value while respecting everyone’s difference.
  • “None of us should be judgmental or bossy about anyone’s values, no matter what your top value is.” (11:48)
• She consults her daughter, Sophia, for a reality check:
  • Suzy: “Do I proselytize? Or alternatively, do I keep it in pretty good check?”
  • Sophia: “Oh, come on. You keep it in pretty good check, I think… I feel like people are often surprised to learn [faith is your top value].” (12:56)
• Suzy reflects on the discipline it takes to not “go stratospheric” with Santa imagery and keep her faith private out of respect for others.

6. Personal Faith Journey: From Outlier to Outspoken

• Family background: Jewish atheist father, culturally Catholic but anti-religious mother (14:41).
• Early intrigue: Attending Mass as a child, finding the atmosphere mystically appealing but encountering dismissiveness (“Jesus was a troublemaker”) (16:27).
• Boarding school breakthrough: Inspired by charismatic preacher Bobby Thompson, joining Bible study, entering faith intellectually before embracing it emotionally (18:00).
• University years: Attendance at Memorial Chapel sermons, but still quietly faithful out of fear of rejection from peers and family.
• Adulthood “coming out”: After marriage and children, involvement in church community, finally openly embracing Christian identity after years of silence (“When did you become a Jesus freak?” a family member asks critically) (20:32).

7. Christmas as Fulfillment of Top Value

• Christmas now a time for fully living out her “Cosmos” value despite the tension with secular traditions—finding joy in the story and meaning of Jesus’ birth, especially Mary’s story (“That whole story fills me with so much wonder and so much astonishment”) (22:08).

Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• “Christmas is like an emotional minefield, and we’re going there.” — Suzy Welch (00:32)
• “Cosmos is my number one value. I am a Christian person. But, again, my faith tradition doesn’t matter—for the methodology, it’s about the value of faith, not the specific faith.” (07:40)
• “It’s a secular world, okay? And this holding of it is kind of like sticking a finger in my socket.” (08:25)
• On holding back her faith in secular environments:
  • “I get the looks from everybody in the room and I dropped it right there because I have spent so much of my life doing exactly that.” (09:49)
• On childhood religious curiosity:
  • “She (grandmother) said that Jesus was a troublemaker. Well, she could have said anything more interesting to me—because I loved troublemakers, and I still do!” (16:47)
• On embracing faith:
  • “I finally had to decide that I was not gonna live for their judgment and I was gonna be who I was.” (21:36)
• “Maybe, maybe that’s what Christmas is all about. And what a great gift that would be.” (22:44)

Important Segments & Timestamps

• Opening & Christmas as emotional minefield — 00:01–02:00
• Introduction to Becoming You & Values Inventory — 03:05–06:15
• Faith (“Cosmos”) as a top value and the barbell effect — 05:56–06:58
• The dilemma of including faith in the values survey — 06:58–08:09
• Secular versus religious Christmas; Santa anecdote — 08:09–10:34
• Discussion with daughter about faith expression — 12:53–13:52
• Suzy’s personal faith journey: childhood to adulthood — 14:41–21:36
• Living faith at Christmas, and the story of Mary — 22:08–22:44
• Closing reflections on understanding others’ values — 22:44–23:24
• Episode closes with a Christmas hymn — 23:24–end

Conclusion

In this uniquely candid and thought-provoking Christmas episode, Suzy Welch offers a vulnerable look at what it means to hold faith as your core value while navigating the secular realities of the modern holiday season. She encourages listeners to honor their own and others’ values with openness, humor, and humility, suggesting that this mutual respect might be the greatest gift Christmas can offer.

Quote to remember:
"Maybe the best thing at Christmas is not what Santa brings down the chimney chute, but this act of understanding each other's values with respect and an open heart and an open mind and maybe a reverence for our differences." (22:44)