Thoughts on Christmas Gifts

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Bonus Post! September is when I start thinking about Christmas gifts, and I've already mentioned some of conundrums about this year's Christmas in my last post, namely the fact that we will have very little money to spend on gifts. I think this is a blessing. One of my heroes, Saint Clive, explains my ilk with Christmas gift-giving perfectly, so I will let him be the one to say it:

Three things go by the name of Christmas. One is a religious festival. This is important and obligatory for Christians; but as it can be of no interest to anyone else, I shall naturally say no more about it here. The second (it has complex historical connections with the first, but we needn't go into them) is a popular holiday, an occasion for merry-making and hospitality. If it were my business to have a 'view' on this, I should say that I much approve of merry-making. But what I approve of much more is everybody minding his own business. I see no reason why I should volunteer views as to how other people should spend their own money in their own leisure among their own friends. It is highly probable that they want my advice on such matters as little as I want theirs. But the third thing called Christmas is unfortunately everyone's business. 

I mean of course the commercial racket. The interchange of presents was a very small ingredient in the older English festivity. Mr. Pickwick took a cod with him to Dingley Dell; the reformed Scrooge ordered a turkey for his clerk; lovers sent love gifts; toys and fruit were given to children. But the idea that not only all friends but even all acquaintances should give one another presents, or at least send one another cards, is quite modern and has been forced upon us by the shopkeepers.
- C.S. Lewis from “What Christmas Means to Me” in God in the Dock. Read more of the essay and some bonus ideas on the Narnia Santa Clause here. 

I mean really. This:

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becomes this:

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becomes this:

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...which long-term can and often does create some form of entitlement in all of us (I haven't decided if Jimmy Kimmel is a genius or a monster):

The purpose of gift-giving is to show a person that you love and appreciate them. The Christmas season is rarely marked by love and appreciation (try stress and exhaustion). Later in the essay, Lewis makes the point that we are basically duped into thinking that we MUST buy things to help the shopkeepers. True, many local businesses benefit greatly from the societal pressures to buy more and better things for every person on our list (which grows longer every year) on an annual basis. But does the consumer actually benefit from all of their consumption? Do those receiving the multitudes of gifts we give actually benefit from them? Or does it all just become "noise, noise, noise, noise, NOISE" (to quote one Mr. Grinch... he has a point). Does an ipad or the biggest, best Lego set mean we love the person we are giving them to?

I find the Christmas Craze negates the entire purpose of gift-giving. We don't actually have the time to spend thoughtfully choosing a gift for every person on our list, so why scramble to buy them all something? So they can have yet another knick-knack or plastic toy or piece of clutter in their homes? Yes, you thought of them, but only long enough to relieve your own guilt. This is not gift-giving. This is a bizarre, wasteful, and counter-productive construct of society that obligates people to go into debt just to feel better about themselves. It ceases to become about the people we give gifts to. We must out-do ourselves every year, blow them away with our "thoughtfulness" and "generosity," and all the while we are all accumulating more and more STUFF we really don't need. Not only that, but we are then given the luxury of ungratefulness, which many of us take, even though we're just better at hiding it than children are.

(You will learn that I am a cynical person. And a hypocrite. I'm working on that.)

This year, Jamie and I are giving everyone the gift of non-obligation... please, for the love of Pete, do not give us stuff, especially this year because we will be living out of a suitcase, but after that too. We don't want you to buy stuff for us because you feel like you have to. The spontaneous, "oh, Jamie & Ciara would like that robot thing" does make us feel nice, but just send us a picture of it and say: "thought of you!" and it will have the same effect without you having to spend money and us having to move the stuff we already have around to make space for it. Better yet, just have us over for dinner. We love food and company.

As far as us giving you gifts, we are taking a leaf from Lewis' book and perhaps only giving gifts to children (I think I heard that anecdote about his seemingly stingy Christmas-gift-policy in the Great Courses series on his life & works). I say "perhaps" because it could easily be argued that children are the ones who can least use the "gifts" we choose to give them (see above video).

I think I will miss wrapping boxes in pretty paper (I take gift-wrapping very seriously... it is an art). And I do love to pick out gifts for people. But I won't miss going shopping every weekend and spending too much money (and more of it every year) and hoping I get good reactions to the gifts I've picked for people (I hate that I do this, because then it ceases to be a gift when I expect even a good reaction in return) and adding to the excessive consumption that is so contrary to the whole reason we celebrate Christmas... which brings me to this quote from my other hero, Dietrich Bonhoeffer:

For the great and powerful of this world, there are only two places in which their courage fails them, of which they are afraid deep down in their souls, from which they shy away. These are the manger and the cross of Jesus Christ. No powerful person dares to approach the manger, and this even includes King Herod. For this is where thrones shake, the mighty fall, the prominent perish, because God is with the lowly. Here the rich come to nothing, because God is with the poor and hungry, but the rich and satisfied he sends away empty. Before Mary, the maid, before the manger of Christ, before God in lowliness, the powerful come to naught; they have no right, no hope; they are judged.
- From God Is In the Manger: Reflections on Advent and Christmas, inflection in bold mine.