My Christmas Rant

Despite my attempts this year to rebel against the commercialization of Christmas, I have fallen prey once again. Part of my rebellion centers on the fact that we just paid for, and are recovering from, our wedding that even though it was not particularly extravagant, still cost more than a few months of pay. But the main part of my rebellion has to do with my total lack of social responsibility, my guilt about that and my desire to do something for other people who are in need. Of course I want to receive Christmas presents! I have a list of a hundred things I would like if given the chance. But I don’t need anything. Our house is overflowing with stuff; books, CDs, DVDs, clothes, toys, stuff, stuff, stuff!

I suggested to friends that we should take the money we planned on spending on each other and pool it to donate to a charity, shelter, or maybe even adopt a family and give gifts to them. But it is hard to change habit, and it is nice to give gifts to your friends and family. I have a plan for next year. It is called a Free Christmas Yard Sale. Everyone donates stuff, new or gently used, and people can come by, pick out two items and we will wrap them and it is all free. The only rule is that the people choosing gifts must be picking them out for someone besides themselves. I am really looking forward to this event, and hopefully will have time next year to plan it well.

I had a good friend in high school who I roomed with for two years. She was living with a foster family because her mother was unstable, possibly she was a drug addict; I wasn’t sure. This friend had been through some really hard times. She had lived in a cardboard box, literally, and had been disappointed and hurt many times in her life. But she told me about a special Christmas that stayed in her mind. Her mother, I think in an attempt to make a bad situation good, took a beat up old Christmas tree and pulled off the remaining needles and spray painted it silver and they decorated it. My friend talked about this experience with a sentimental sparkle in her eyes and I realized that she didn’t see the tragedy in that Christmas. She didn’t remember how they went without presents and a “real tree”, she remember the creativity, the fun of doing something with her family.

Kids don’t realize that they are poor. I never did. I thought sleeping by the fire with my family was great fun and a bonding experience, not a survival situation to keep us warm because my parents couldn’t afford to pay the heating bill during a bitter winter month. But as you get older, you start to understand that there are people who have things that you don’t have, and you start to feel different. I remember the Christmas that my mother announced that we were not going to have any Christmas presents. We were not living in a box, we lived in a clean, warm apartment building, but what I didn’t know then was that my mother put every cent she had into keeping us in that nice apartment and keeping us fed and clothed. We cried, a lot! We had never had a Christmas without presents.

Christmas arrived and we were prepared for a quiet day together without any gifts. It was then that we discovered, outside of our door, two trash bags filled with gifts for us three kids and some for my mother too. We all cried and held each other and opened our gifts with a special reverence that year. We believed it was a Christmas miracle, or Santa or both. Either way, it was a powerful Christmas for our family.

It makes me sad when I see kids, and adults, open present after present, with burgeoning disappointment as the pile builds because they got less than year. How do you help someone to see that there are so many people in the world with nothing? How do we ensure, as much fun as it can be, that we don’t all get swept up into the commercials, the packaging, the desire for stuff that sucks us all into the Christmas spirit vortex, spinning us out of control, running up our credit and keeping us buying, buying, buying? Whether you believe in a Christian god or not, Christmas is about celebrating the birth of Christ, who was not surrounded by stuff at birth but surrounded by friends and family. Isn’t that what we need? Isn’t it the people that surround us (literally and metaphorically) that bring value to our lives?