Christmas is coming.
I don’t know if you heard.
In some ways Christmas is a complicated holiday for those of us who are Christians. It is difficult to embrace and celebrate both the religious and cultural aspects of the holiday without giving short shrift to one or the other.
Growing up in conservative East Tennessee, one of my best friends was Muslim (actually a secret Muslim – just like Obama – you didn’t really want to be out as a Muslim in East Tennessee during the first Gulf war. She was also Iraqi, but I think she told people she was from Argentina or something. We were all pretty stupid.) Anyway, I remember asking her, one year, whether her family celebrated Christmas (I mean, how could you not?) She joked that her family just celebrated “the commercial part of Christmas.”
I always thought that this was wonderfully honest, but it does of course beg the question of how many of us who celebrate Christmas as a religious holiday, in actuality, end up only celebrating the “commercial part of Christmas.”
As a child I have strong memories of thinking about how the holiday was all about the birth of Jesus and how wonderful that was, and at the same time thinking “Aright, now where are the presents?”
Santa Claus probably doesn’t help. I love the idea of Santa Claus and have told my kids all about him, but I’m not sure that an old guy living in the winter tundra cobbling toys together with his army of semi-human slaves and then traveling around the world in an 18th century mode of magical transportation really helps to clarify the holiday season.
I was listening to a Christian radio program once when a lady called in and said that to help her own kids remember the “reason for the season,” she told them that, yes, Santa made the toys, but that Jesus was really the one deciding who was naughty and nice and who would receive the toys. Santa was really just a low-cost UPS service for the savior of the world’s meritocratic gift giving program.
You want to talk about some kids who are going to need therapy later in life.
I struggle with all of this, because I think that in many ways the commercial aspect of Christmas is wonderful. I love Christmas morning and watching the kids run downstairs to see their toys and I certainly have treasured memories of those moments from my own childhood. I absolutely do not subscribe to the “pitch the baby out with the bathwater” mentality of some people who have become rightfully frustrated with the tone Christmas has taken in recent years / decades.
My pastor gave a wonderful sermon last week about the over-commercialization of Christmas and how it has become not just a time for over indulgence, but that more often than not, people go into debt to buy buy buy all the gifts that they give, often out of a sense of obligation instead of desire.
It was a well thought out and beautifully made point, but I have to admit that while I was sincerely nodding my head and saying, “yes, that’s absolutely true.” I was also mentally thinking, “Ok, I need to get one more gift for Sarah, something else small for Audra and then I need to plan Christmas dinner and……”
And that is what I worry about. In our American desire to make everything perfect and to recreate this elusive Norman Rockwell holiday that is all stuck in our minds, we spend months planning and spending and worrying all for a few hour payoff on the morning of the 25th that, more often than not, leaves us feeling a little empty afterward.
There is so much to do to take care of the “stuff” of Christmas that no matter how hard I try to focus on the “reason” for Christmas I find it almost impossible.
This is the insidious duality of the holiday. Both parts of Christmas (the religious and the gift giving) are inherently good. But one takes a lot more time, is a lot more fun, and tends to, as they say in the theater world, draw focus.
So every year, I try to focus on the meaning of Christmas while simultaneously spending all my time and energy focusing on the event of Christmas and I never quite succeed, but I seem lured on by the belief that I could.
I’m not entirely sure what to do about this. My pastor, a practical man, suggested that in an effort to balance the two, we each decide to buy one less gift, or return one that we have already purchased, and instead give a donation to a charity.
If you are inclined to do this, two wonderful charities that very much reflect the Christmas season are:
The Heifer Project which gives animals to poor families and teaches them how to use an animal such as a cow or a chicken to provide long term food and financial stability. www.heifer.org
Kiva is an extraordinary program where you personally make micro loans to families around the world. Each person requesting a loan tells you what they need the money for and when they expect to pay it back. You sort through the thousands of people until you find someone you want to support. For instance, Mario wants $350 to purchase wood for his carpentry business (you can give all $350 or just a portion). He plans to repay that in 7 months. You can also look and see that Mario has never been delinquent or defaulted on his loan. There are pictures and descriptions of Mario and the work he is doing. After 7 months, the money you have given will be paid back and you can choose to cash out, or to support someone else. It is a simple, straightforward, inexpensive way to change someone’s life. www.kiva.org
Charitable giving is, obviously, a great way to focus a little more on the point of Christmas, but for me (who has a problem with guilt) sometimes it feels like this is little more than a guilt trade off.
“Ok, God. I know I’m focusing too much on the whole “target / toysrus” part of Christmas, so I tell you what. How about I give $50 to some poor people and we call it square?”
I think God is pleased when we help out the poor, but I suspect he still wants us to be focusing on the true meaning of Christmas and not just the true value.
So what can I say? I’m going to keep trying. I am a deeply flawed person but, on the upside, I at least recognize that about myself.
It’s easy to forget on Christmas morning while surrounded by lights and sweet smells, and piles of packages and the remnants of some old bearded guy who just broke into your house without setting off the alarm, that the real reason for this wacky American holiday is this:
That 2,000 years ago, God decided to help us poor ignorant sods out. And to do that he made the tremendous sacrifice of allowing his son to come to earth in the most humble of ways – to be born to a young, average family so overwhelmed by their circumstances that they ended up sleeping in and delivering their baby in a barn surrounded by animals. And that this tiny baby, this innocent child, would one day grow up to change the world.
Christians, often deservedly, get a bad rap. The actions of Christians over history and in the present has not always been admirable - in fact it has often been deplorable. But when you look at the life and the words of Jesus and what he has called us to do, there is nothing but goodness in that.
And on this bizarrely wonderful holiday that we have cobbled together from Christian tradition, pagan ritual and commercial greed, it is important to remember that it all comes about because of the birth and life of God’s son.
And while we are all surrounded by wrapping paper and pretending to be pleased with the salad shooter we have just received from Aunt Agnes, it is more than important to remember that. It is imperative that we take time to remember and worship and thank God, for the extraordinary gift that he so willingly gave to us.
Note: I’ll be taking a week or two off from blogging to enjoy the holiday and try to be as good a person as I’m always telling other people to be. Have a wonderful holiday and I’ll see you again in 2009.