(Or, "why giving gifts doesn't necessarily mean you sold your soul")
Yes, exchanging gifts around Christmas has gotten out of hand. Every year it’s bigger and better gifts, bigger and worse debt, and bigger and more useless piles of “stuff” that we never use. Black Friday brings out the worst in humanity, malls and big box stores are evil, Jesus is the reason for the season but not the reason you’re shopping at Dick’s, blah blah blah.
Listen, I agree. The retail side of Christmas is out of hand and a tragic sign of where our culture’s priorities lie. For many, gift giving has become more trouble than it’s worth. For these and other reasons, both sides of our family have begun cutting back in gift giving in recent years. Lisa and I tithe a percentage of our gift budget to charitable organizations each Christmas. We’re scaling back so we can spend more time in church than at the mall this month. But let’s not be too holier-than-thou. The fact is, there’s not necessarily anything wrong with giving and receiving gifts with others.
That’s right, I said it. It’s still okay to exchange gifts and be a Christian. I have spent considerable time this season shopping for people I care about. I’ll admit, I’ve put more thought into some gifts than others, but with all my gifts I’ve thought about the receiver. Who are they? What are their interests? Will they really use this? Will they appreciate it?
You see, gift giving offers us a chance to think about people around us. We smile just thinking about how much she’ll love it, or how his eyes will light up when he unwraps it. Or, when we struggle to find a good gift because we don’t know the person very well, we recognize the room for growth in a neglected relationship. Gift giving can be a meaningful way to reflect on and express our love for each other as spouses, siblings, children, parents, aunts and uncles, nieces and nephews, co-workers, or friends. In fact, for some people gift giving is the most comfortable way to express love for another.
I’m not saying we all have to give each other gifts, because it isn’t the purpose of the season. And this is in no way a call for others to give me gifts – I have already received enough Christmas gifts to last a lifetime. But I’m also not saying we have to feel guilty if we have a desire to give. We can be reasonable gift-givers and Christians. We can worship Christ on Christmas Eve and open up gifts on Christmas morning, and not be selling our souls to the devil.
My parents, sister, and I chose to not exchange gifts this year. Yet when we gathered for a family Christmas dinner last night, my mother had placed a small gift for each of us by our seat at the table. My first response was to roll my eyes and think, “Oh Mom, it’s not about giving gifts. I thought we agreed to not do that this year. Return it and save your money, because Lord knows we don’t need this.”
Instead, I gladly accepted the gift, which was a small carved nativity. I said a simple “Thank you,” and admired it for a moment to show my appreciation for the well-thought gift. Then, as a family, we bowed together and prayed, and broke bread together as we celebrated being in the presence of each other and of the Christ child. And it was then that I realized, in this season when we celebrate the joy of the greatest gift of all, that there can also be true joy in the giving and receiving of lesser gifts, when the gift giving is reasonably done out of love.
Rev. Hoeke:
ReplyDeleteI found this through the trackback to my post, and enjoyed it very much. Thank you.
I think my favorite time for gift-giving was when I was small -- about 8 or so -- and had a little money for the first time, and was able to buy presents by myself for the first time. There was a local gourmet grocery store, and I used to love finding the right modest gift for each loved one -- the Droste apple my mother loved since she was a child, the bag of Maui Wowie potato chips for my grandfather, special hostess sugar for my grandmother, etc.
I had all the time in the word (ah! the concept of a Christmas vacation!), and no culturally ingrained hang-ups about whether the gifts cost enough or were "substantial" enough.
Now, it seems like too little of gift-giving is about the simple joys of Christmas morning, and too many are culturally ingrained ideas force-fed us by the television. It's also my sense that the secular culture -- as opposed to the Christian culture -- has gradually widened the circle of people to whom we feel obligated to give gifts, until it is much more substantial than close family and friends. It's easier (for some relatives) to think of just the right gift for a parent or sibling or child. But a cousin? A co-worker? That starts to get harder -- and we retreat into the easy and the generic, thoughtfully supplied by the consumer culture.
The other way that the consumer culture makes it harder is that we're all so inclined to buy things as soon as we want them. The internet makes that very easy. It's much harder to assume that, if you find the perfect gift for someone, they won't already have found it on Amazon and bought it for themselves.
The closest I come now to the simple joys of an 8-year-old is finding the perfect charitable donation with which to honor someone, combined with (by mutual agreement) fun toys for each others' children. That's how we practice the love you suggest -- rather than a sense of obligation that's largely consumer-culture driven.
Thanks again for the inspiring post. Merry Christmas.
Ken
Love this post, Erik (as you might've imagined from my status, heh). Thanks for linking me. My family has on occasion not done the gift exchange, and the sense was that we *missed* having it. I wonder if the less openly demonstrative a family is about affection, the more important such rituals become as gestures through which we funnel the feelings that we aren't completely comfortable voicing.
ReplyDeleteOh, and I went to Ken's post and read that too--actually agreed with it, particularly the nonsense about whether retailers are using the word Christmas.