Tuesday, 08 December 2009

• Buy, Buy, Buy! The Consumerism of Christmas

  This is the third post, in my series on Christmas. Just as like the last post, I am going to use Christmas to refer to Biblical Christmas. and christmas to refer to the secular version of the holiday. Having dealt with Christmas trees in the first post, and Santa Claus in the second post, this third post is going to talk about the commercial aspects of Christmas.

  Many people have issues with Christmas because they view it as more of a holiday for Wal-mart then a day of celebration of Christ's birth. Is it possible to celebrate Christmas, without spending the annual budget of small African countries?

  I grew up in the Worldwide Church Of God, one of the things that always bugged Armstrong (founder of WCOG) about christmas is that it seemed to him that people forgot to give to the church during the holiday. They spent all of the money on gifts for friends and family, and didn't give the church much at all. How can they claim to be celebrating Christ's birthday, when they didn't give Christ's church a gift?

  I think Armstrong has an interesting point, a point that needs to be addressed. I don't believe that it is wrong to give gifts to each other during this holiday. But we shouldn't forget the church either. My pastor, has challenged his church in the past, to take the amount of money, of the most expensive gift, and match it as an offering to the church. So if the most expensive gift was say $60, we take another $60 and donate it to the church. I don't know about you, but I think an arrangement like this would certainly remind me that, as much fun as family can be, Jesus is the reason for the season. Other things can be done, like volunteering at a soup kitchen, ringing the bell for the Salvation Army, helping the kids at the church practice a Christmas musical, or joining the adult church choir if they do a musical. I am sure that many of you can come up with other ideas. It may be hard for some of us to focus on Christ during this time, as we run around and try to get everything done, but taking the time out to remember God and the true meaning of Christmas; this may help to make this less stressful.

  I know of a family in which the dad tried each year to have the "perfect" christmas. he grew up in a family in which, if you bought one member an $11 gift and another member a $12 gift, the one who got the $11 gift would think you didn't love him/her as much as the one who got the $12 gift. So the Dad decided that, when he had kids, he would have the christmas that he never got as a kid. However each year, it seemed like it could not measure up to his expectations of a "perfect" christmas. The family eventually joined WCOG, and that put an end to Christmas. When WCOG changed in 1994 and decided Christmas was not pagan, this family decided to continue to not celebrate Christmas to make it easier for the dad.

  How can Christians avoid falling into the trap of debt and the trap that the family above fell into? We already talked about volunteering our time, but what if we limited everyone to one gift? or maybe at the most three? If Jesus only got thee gifts, why does your child/parent/aunt/uncle/coworker/boss/grandparent need six gifts?  I think that would certainly help the budget. Another thing we can do is set aside a certain amount of money each month, and only use that to buy gifts. That will help with the debt aspect.

  My point here is this: let's not throw Christmas out with the bath water because the secular world spends a lot of money. We are not the secular world, and we need to be separate, different; we need to be focused on Jesus and not the brand new BB gun we can use to put someone's eye out with. Let's have fun sharing gifts with others, but let's also share Jesus, we can have both Jesus and gifts.  Who cares what the secular world does?  If they want to spend hundreds of dollars, let them. But we need to focus on Jesus first, and remember him, then we will have his live to share with family in the form of gifts and love.

  What is your Christmas gift-giving practice? Have you ever gone over-board on Christmas presents? What have you done to combat the desire to buy a lot during this holiday season?
  

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