Yesterday, we had a wonderful Alternative Christmas Faire at my church. Our Kenya Children's Mission Group raised enough money to build almost five full houses for grandparents taking care of orphaned children, or school fees and uniforms for hundreds of students, or food for an entire village. Combined with other funds, we are leaning towards finishing a new Well project for an organization that wants to be able to have sustainable farming in order to feed its orpanhed infants, abused girls, and AIDS patients.
WAAAYYYY Better than a new I-Phone... or ten new IPhones, for that matter.
I've always been a member of the working poor - but like most kids raised in America post-Great Depression 1, I was an avid believer in the Receive part of Christmas. When Christmas time rolled around, my siblings and I would sit in our living room consuming the toy catalogs and circling all the amazing toys that we wanted Santa to bring us for Christmas. We wanted everything. Two or three items on each page demanded our purchase. Of course, being part of the working poor, we usually got about three toys and an assortment of clothes. We loved all the toys we got, but, of course, joy was tempered with a bit of disappointment because often times the flashy thing that we most wanted was also the most expensive.
Still, we made do - playing with our new toys all day long and for the entire rest of the winter break, and then getting to enjoy the new items anew when we got back to school and got to share them with our friends who also had new toys to play with. Christmas was a communal affair.
As I got older, my Christmas's fell into three distinct phases. First, I was in the Navy and I didn't get to experience Christmas with my family or friends. Opening the presents that Christmas was the joyless equivalent of finding buried treasure while trapped on a desert island. At first, I chalked it up to the heat and the palm trees and said, "Hawaii is no place to enjoy Christmas." But though I missed the central tenet of my problem, I also made sure it was the last Christmas I spent alone.
The second phase occurred after I got out of the Navy and found steady employment. Suddenly burdened with a paycheck, the Christmas season exploded for me. I discovered that I could afford to buy the flashy things that I had always wanted when I was a kid but could never afford. My Sister and I went hog-wild when it came time to go Christmas shopping. We spent and spent and spent and for about five to ten years there (especially the first couple of years with my Sister's kids) we had overflow parking for all the loot that "Santa" placed under the tree. It literally took us hours and hours to open everything and at a pace that would have made a drill sergeant proud. But this smorgasbord of Christmas excess always ended later than night when I went to find new places for all my new loot and realized that so much of it was... well... it was crap - the useless stuff that you would bypass 11 months out of the year was now cluttering my house. It was well intentioned and joyously received crap, but it was still crap nonetheless.
A few years ago, I realized that something needed to change. It wasn't just the bills that were getting outrageous, it was the lack of space for all the junk I had been accumulating - junk that I just didn't need. I began by asking myself whether Christmas was still important and whether it would make sense to just cancel it. And that was when I entered my latest, and hopefully, last phase of Christmas.
You see, I realized that what was important to me about Christmas was not the getting or the giving. It wasn't about the holiday songs or the Christmas tree or what type of food was on the dining room table. It wasn't about the Christmas Eve service or mass consumerism or even the Peanut's Christmas Special. What made Christmas my favorite holiday of them all was the ability to spend time with my family and friends for no other reason than just to be with them.
Looking through the catalogs at Christmas was a time I spent with my siblings where we weren't trying to kill each other. Spending time at my Grandparents house was all about being in my pajamas in front of the heating vent with my grandparent's dog watching people open presents and having toast and jam with my grandpa. Christmas dinner was about seeing my extended family, catching up with all my relatives that I only saw once or twice a year, and being stuck in the kid's room with my larger sibling base. The same sorts of things that I see now in large families on a weekly basis, were the things that I enjoyed most about Christmas. Togetherness. Family. Ohana.
Oh sure, the Christmas presents are nice, but they're not the point. The dinner is delicious, but its not what feeds us. Doing Christmas is more than just following some checklist of activities that must be performed every year. Christmas is family and friends and joy and laughter and maybe even a few tears.
So this year, as you prepare to start the holiday marathon, pause first to consider what really makes the holiday important and what real joy is out there to find. Yes, Jesus is the reason for the season - but stacking a Baby Jesus on top of a pile of consumer goods misses the point. Jesus can best be celebrated in peace, joy, and togetherness.
3 comments:
Good post, and I could not agree more with the sentiments. Years ago the EMBLOS and I decided to ratchet back Christmas to the point where each kid gets, at most, two or three items and we keep our spending down to less than $75.00 per kid. No credit cards, no "sticker shock" come January. Instead we just enjoy the day together and the kids are no worse for the wear.
Cheers.
Thanks Randall;
I wish I'd come to this conclusion a little sooner. I'd have saved a few years of sticker shock.
As "poor" as I was growing up, I don't ever remember suffering - though there were a few too many nights of lamb blocks for dinner ;)
A good friend of mine doesn't do presents for Christmas. His family decided that it was better to treat each other right year round than on just one day a year. Can't disagree with that sentiment - but I'd miss presents under the tree as well.
Thanks for this Will. Needed to read it, especially in light of seeing how there's one mom in our school community who has taken it upon herself through her foundation to build a school for an orphanage in Haiti. She's received some community support from local churches, but when she's reached out to the community as a whole (i.e. school community), there's been a dull thud. Sad to say, many in my community (outside of church) are all talk, little action when it comes to matters that don't affect their families and kids.
While indeed, we'll have some presents under the tree for each other, I'm looking forward to hanging out together, watching movies at home, and finding organizations to support, like this one mom's.
Man, I have so much fun blessing others...
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