Already, I can feel the pressure of mass consumerism building.
What are we going to buy everyone for Christmas?
Over the last decade, our family has tried to reduce the hub-bub that is Christmas. We've opened our home to international students. We've limited gifts. We've made Christ the priority in our holiday. Still, we feel so much pressure to include everyone we've ever known on either a gift list or a card list!
I haven't mailed out Christmas cards in years. I used to publish a family newsletter (written in newspaper headline format) but even that became too taxing. As much as I would love to include every nephew, niece, and cousin, my gift giving has been reduced to immediate family only. I hope my family knows I love them, since I try so hard to tell them.
Then why the guilt?
We live in the world, and we're bombarded with a secular worldview. Advertisements tout the need to buy gifts for loved ones. Commercials help us realize that unless a certain gift is given, we really don't love that much. Everything is about what our loved ones need and deserve from us. How could we possibly let them down? I have a ready answer for this kind of pressure and find it easy to ignore. I mean, it's a little obvious, isn't it?
What blindsides me is the pressure from the Christian world. Talk about bombardment! Every organization of good works steps up their game at Christmas. I'm sure they do quite well, or they wouldn't waste precious dollars on the extra advertising.
For these organizations, what makes giving at Christmas different from giving during the rest of the year? Most of the ones I know about are indeed worthy of sacrificial giving. By meeting the physical needs of others, we are able to share the love of Christ and minister to their spiritual needs as well. Why not all year?
Every Christmas, my Dad feels enormous pressure because he can't afford to send us gifts like he has in the past. Directly, he feels he's not being a good father/grandfather because he can't specifically send gifts at this time of year. I can't tell you how angry this makes me! I'm not angry at him, but at the lie he's bought into - If I can't buy stuff, I'm not good for my family.
How did this happen? How can we stop it?
I guess I need to ponder what I would consider an ideal Christmas. There's much that is obvious, but there's so much more I'd like to change from rabid commercialism to Christmas as it was originally intended. I'll have to get back to this.
Input welcome. ;-)
Ticker
3 comments:
I am so with you!!!
An ideal Christmas? That's a great question to ponder. Who's birthday are we celebrating, anyway?
I think we as women, moms, homemakers, feel the pressure the greatest (I could be wrong here) because we want to somehow make it an ideal Christmas for all of our loved ones. I know I have been known to jump through ridiculous hoops trying to find the perfect gift to make a loved one go 'oooh!' on Christmas morning. It's a crazy existence full of attempted mind reading, second guessing, self recrimination, yada, yada. I'm left empty and exhausted and I may or may not have ever found the 'perfect' gift.
My ideal Christmas is a quiet one spent with just our immediate family enjoying a day focused on the genuinely Perfect Gift.
I loved this comment from my friend, G:
Wish I had more time, but the brief is that I appreciated your thoughts, envied that you have surpassed me in eliminating the hub bub (I still TRY to send out a newsletter every year or two!), and pondered the biblical holy-days, how the primary one is the 7th day Sabbath (rest) and the most significant annual one is Yom Kippur (Day of At-one-ment), a day of fasting and prayer. None of the holidays that God initiated are gift-giving ones, except gifts that HE gave! Chanukkah is a between-the-testaments rememberance that is only mentioned in the NEw Testament (John somewhere) when Jesus was in the temple at the Feast of Dedication (chanukkah). The gift-giving aspect happened much later, initiated probably by wanting to "keep up with the Christians" in giving things to the children.
Love and appreciate you
G
It's awful that I have said many times how much I dislike the holidays. When I say how much I dislike them, I am referring to the secular hype and hubbub that you and others have mentioned. So much stress! It can't be good for us, and it certainly doesn't promote our being able to concentrate on the real meaning--holidays = holy days. Those who are able to give and those who are able to receive should revel in each others presence, not presents.
I agree with Dada--moms feel the pressure the most. Let me tell every mom out there, "I love you, no gifts necessary."
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