Another Christmas has come and gone, and with it the pressures of Christmas shopping and gift giving. It's not that I'm a stingy person--I love to be generous and give gifts to the people I love. But I don't like feeling like Christmas gift giving has evolved into a duty, the challenge of buying things for people who have everything that they need--as well as a lot of stuff that they don't need. It's the tension of avoiding Christmas becoming all about the physical things we can buy for each other while focusing on the reality that the Word became flesh--our God took on a physical body to attain for us the spiritual blessings that none of us could ever buy.
I wouldn't want to do away with gift giving, I suppose. Gift giving motivated by love can be meaningful and joyful. But I yearn, like blogger Amy Julia Becker, for a time when gifts meant more because they were something beyond the everyday. Amy Julia explains:
My idealized version of Christmas comes from “Little House on the Prairie,” where Christmas involved treats and presents that weren’t a part of every day life. Laura and Mary couldn’t imagine anything better than a stocking with a tin cup, a peppermint stick and a shiny new penny. I would love for our Christmas celebration to approximate their sense of delight. But I can only imagine one way for Christmas morning to become a time of celebrating the material world and humbly receiving from one another. We would have to live more simply for the other 364 days of the year.
In the world of the Little House family, when an orange and peppermint stick were once-in-a-year events, it was relatively easy to find gifts that would delight the receivers. Those peppermint sticks and oranges didn't have to compete with smart phones, flat-screen TVs, game systems, and e-readers. And the relationships among family members satisfied then what many of us try to satisfy today with things that drive us away from meaningful human relationships. What could possibly provide this level of delight in our fast-food, Facebook, texting, smart-phone world, where our problem is finding space for all of the stuff we already have, never mind room for all the new stuff we don't need--or even want?
This year, I think my daughter Katie had the right idea. A college student, she is operating on a limited budget. We encourage her to use whatever money she earns from babysitting jobs, photography clients, and her on-campus job in the library for the things she needs: tuition, books, day to day expenses. She wanted to give gifts to her family, but she didn't have much to work with. She adopted a chapter from the Little House books and bought each of us small treats that she knew we would enjoy. For Henry and me, a small box of Belgium chocolates. For her brother, some kind of Japanese soda with a marble in it that is released when you open the bottle. She gave similar treats to her grandparents. I loved watching her hand out her well-thought-out treats and the delight she obviously felt as we received them with gratitude. Things that aren't part of the every day, things carefully thought out and lovingly given. Things that didn't cost much in dollars.
And then there was Jonathan, whose face lit up when he opened up the package with the Answers in Genesis book that he asked for. The truth is, he would have been thrilled to have found a laptop or expensive game system under the tree. But if he had, I'm not sure he would have found the book so exciting, and I'd rather he learn, for now, the value of the gift of learning.
So while I still haven't entirely figured this gift-giving thing out, some good things happened this year at Christmas. Next Christmas, I'm sure, will be the one where I figure it all out.
