I Don’t Like Christmas (the Holiday Version)
There is a push–a slightly painful, inward nudging of the heart–to do something different with Christmas. The challenge, however, is that we don’t know what different looks, sounds, smells, or feels like. So, instead of attempting change and risking a potentially gift-less, nightmare before Christmas breakdown, we simply do the same things, apply the same rules, and carry on in our same merry ways just like last year, the year before that, and the year before that. Stark tradition rules Christmas with a jingle and a jangle, and its fearless, fat leader lives on in the hearts and habits of children and their parents alike from New York Wal-marts to California Costcos. This Christmas, with its flashing lights, red poinsettias, gingerbread men, and time spent packing and unpacking, will probably look and feel very similar, if not identical to, the experience of Christmas’ past. There is comfort in sameness, in tradition, in the tree, in the fire, in the music, in the mega-church, Christmas production, and comfort is what certain cells of leadership within the American church today are attempting to convince us to accept as the founding characteristic of the proper way.
When it comes to Christmas, the church is comfortably confused.
Embedded within typical church activities this time of year, running awkwardly parallel to the underlying theme of Christmas, are a mosaic of time, energy, and economically draining pursuits that not only strain the church budget but the church focus, as well. During Christmas and throughout the year, the church is divided between building an outwardly pleasing facade and genuinely serving the community wherein it doth exist. At times, there is very little difference between strolling through a mall and walking the halls of a church building. We invite people into the church by acting just like them instead of offering them something lovingly strange, different, full of compassion, and brimming with hope. We use comfortable indistinguishability to relate instead of earnest, loving relationship to care, serve and transform. The church has become some kind of nice, well versed, father-figure, always enforcing the blatant rules for good living while simultaneously accepting both angels and elves, reindeer and sheep, receiving expensive gifts and living with self-sacrifice, the watchful eye of Santa and the loving relationship between Jesus and man.
When it comes to Christmas, the church seemingly fails to celebrate any differently than the rest of the world. There are few (if any) defining, heart-felt obligations which the church partakes in or does not that are unique in comparison to how everyone else chooses to celebrate Christmas. The typical, made-for-tv, American church, with its multi-million dollar campus, professional sound system, and stadium sized sanctuary, is working hard to be anything but different. On Sunday morning we say, “Over consumption is idolatry. Take a stand for Christmas. Make it about more than just gifts, shopping experiences, and going to a Christmas Eve service. Put Christ back in Christmas again!” Yet the next day we are in the mall buying multiple gifts for our nieces and nephews.
There is a deeply seeded, habitual contradiction between what the church believes about Christmas and what we actually do for Christmas. While the foundational, routinely practiced, Sunday-before-Christmas sermon may be abounding with truth in regards to Christmas, we heed not these lessons and proceed to purchase and consume all the more regardless of whether we accept or do not accept the truth behind the tinsel and mistletoe. If you believe that Christmas is more than buying gifts and feeding the insatiable appetites of American teenagers lust for the latest material goods, than stop buying gifts for Christmas. If you believe that there is something more than shopping and spending money on things that will not even last the year, than stop shopping and spending money on things that won’t last.
Christian, Christmas, consumerism is baffling. The amount of material goods, trinkets and things to be bought and consumed are always on the rise. In America, there is never a toy deficit. We may let children go homeless and hungry on the streets of L.A. and Indianapolis, but we could never let them go toy-less on Christmas. It just wouldn’t be right. We stuff shoe-boxes full of McDonald’s happy meal toys, sanitary wipes, and toothbrushes, send them somewhere impoverished, overseas, and declare to the rest of the world that on Christmas, no matter how desolate, hungry or poor you are, you will and you must receive something shiny, and it will be us Americans who give it to you. We are so good on Christmas. Shoe boxes full of left over American crap do not change a child’s heart living in the slums of India any more than a big box full of American crap under your suburban, upper-class tree does yours. After receiving a new toy do you think, “Wow, the person who got this for me must really love me.”
People, no matter how rich or poor, do not need more stuff, more widgets, more made-in-China plastic play-ware. What people need is love, and if buying someone a $25 piece of plastic from the friendly, neighborhood, electronics store down the street is the best way we know of to demonstrate that love, than something is critically wrong. Intrinsically, over-consumption, regardless of whether it’s Christmas or not, is nauseatingly repugnant yet somehow still acceptable, especially around the holidays.
Some will state that what’s actually important is maintaining our focus on Christ in spite of the noisy, outwardly pointing, me first, environment that the holiday of Christmas has been morphed into by loud marketers, screaming advertisements, and shoppers concentrating on acquiring the best deals on the best goods. Focus, however, is difficult to maintain when we subject ourselves and dip into, even if only slightly, the very environment which we claim to not want to partake in. How can we authentically maintain our focus on Christ when so much of our attention is centered around and diverted away by anticipatory factors related to gifts under the tree and hot meals in the oven.
The holiday of Christmas is as hard to swallow as some of those bizarre, powdered sugar coated, desert balls which always seem to sneak their way onto the serving table, yet never get re-claimed at the end of the night when leftovers are being divided between starving college cousins and new parents with ravenous, young mouths to feed. It’s hard to know what to do differently withChristmas because Christmas, in its current state, is just so much fun. It’s fun to spend money. It’s fun to get gifts. It’s fun to overeat and then sleep for two days straight. Christmas is fun and comfortable for the majority of people, but when Christmas, or our relationship with Jesus in general, becomes more about having fun, living comfortably, and receiving than it is about giving and nurturing loving relationships with people regardless of what we can get from them in return, than we have severly missed the central aspect of what life as a Christ follower is truly all about. How easy it is to lose site of what Christ has actually called us to.
When Jesus was born, he didn’t lay his head on Egyptian threaded sheets and plush, silky pillows. Instead, he was placed in a manger with straw and wood, surrounded by cold and darkness. Jesus wasn’t born into comfort. He was born into a world with a king that wanted him dead and, upon learning of his birth, reacted by instating territorial, child genocide in order to hopefully rid Israel of baby Jesus. When Jesus was born he didn’t get to stay put and grow accustomed to a certain way of living. Instead, he and his family had to flee to Egypt in orer to escape death. Jesus wasn’t born into a family of rich parents with a two-story home and three car garage. He was born to a mother who was pregnant outside of marriage and a father who probably wondered some days if it was all worth it. The birth of Jesus was characterized by a dirty barn, a manger and an overcrowded hotel; near death escapes, government instituted murder, and fleeing from country to country; a government bent on controlling its destiny, strange visitors from far away places, and potentially disgraceful parents, pregnant before they ever even came together. The birth and early years of Jesus, not exactly what we celebrate on Christmas every 25th of December.
Christmas can be different. Love others more not just by giving them gifts, but by telling them about your great Love, Jesus. Tell others what He did for you. It’s the greatest gift you can give this Christmas, and it won’t cost you a single dollar.
5 Comments
Great post Parke. It does all come down to love. Some how we get sucked into the American culture that says we need to spend, spend, spend and buy lots of gifts.
I loved your statement about “In America, there is never a toy deficit”. I never thought about it like that.
Parke, your posts always leave me feeling perturbed and uncomfortable, my mind running in circles of thought. That’s a good thing. Thanks for the always fresh and raw perspective.
Just don’t look under our Christmas tree when you come over tonight…
Thats Awesome Parke ! I agree !
First off, thank you for being honest. I feel that around Christmas we can make a joke of this topic. We know we shouldn’t be following the consumer culture around us, but we laugh it off and tell everyone about how we have so much shopping left to do, and how we can’t think of a gift for so-and-so. We fall right in line with the world around us, and don’t challenge ourselves or each other because it’s fun, confortable and easy.
This year, we were going to try and do something different with our families. Maybe not get gifts, give money away, or do something together instead of gifts, etc… And to be honest, it started to become really awkward and we started to revert back to habit.
I think part of the problem, and let me know what you think about this, is that we aren’t being creative in how we love the people around us. As believers, Christmas should be celebrating Christ’s birth, and is my “gift” really pointing others to the love of Christ? What would it take to really be focused on Christ on Christmas? And are we really willing to face the awkwardness and frustrastion to do it.
I would love to hear your thoughts!
@Katie,
I totally agree! I think our creativity is lacking, indeed. As you say, part of why we don’t know what to do with Christmas is because we have never taken a good, hard, long, creative look at what could be done instead of the typical response. So many times we get stuck because we wait until a week before Christmas to make a decision to not fall into the routine, and by that point in time it’s simply too late. We need to start earlier, cultivating a lifestyle of “loving by design” not simply giving a sum of money away or feeding the hungry one day a week. We need to cultivate the lifestyle and allow Christmas to be a time of really loving others in new and fascinating ways, not just by giving away gifts.
It’s so easy to fall into the routine of Christmas, especially when everyone around you is doing the same thing. Really, once one other person buys you a gift, you automatically feel responsible to give them one as well. Part of what the change will look like is making it known to those you love that you are going to be different and why you are choosing to be so. You’re right, it will be a bit awkward. But, as authentic Christians, I think that’s exactly what we are called to be. Awkward.
Thanks for all of your comments on this rather controversial topic.