A couple of weeks ago, I went to the Nashville Cohort where we heard Chris Seay speak. I'm not very familiar with his work, but I know he's written some and is a part of the Voice project.
He talked a lot about Christmas and some of his thoughts on it. One of his biggest bones of contention was how materialism and consumerism has become almost inextricably intertwined with the celebration of Jesus' birth. In fact, one of the things that he and his church had thought about was picketing stores that said "Merry Christmas" to people because they found the materialism to be profaning the name of a man who was born in a very poor situation and lived his life as a homeless man.
I found this an interesting idea, because this is something Sheryl and I really struggle with, especially as Kinsey is grasping the idea of Christmas and most particularly the gifts that she gets. So we're trying a couple of things this year.
1) Not as many gifts. Part of feeding the consumerism model is buying (no pun intended) into it.
So, unlike previous years, we're not getting as much stuff.
2) Differences in gifts. We've asked for not so many toys. Kinsey has a ton of toys. A closet full in the basement. A room with a bunch. Toys scattered in various other places. So this year we've asked for clothes and books for her. This is not to say that she's not getting any toys, but after previous experience, what's really the point of buying her a bunch of stuff that she might play with for a week?
3) Thinking of others. For the first time, Kinsey is using her own chore money to buy gifts for people. She and I got something for Sheryl and Connor. I think that's a good experience for her. Something else Chris Seay mentioned was this idea. He said that he asks his kids about other people's birthdays. For instance, if you went to someone else's birthday party and you got all the presents, wouldn't that be weird? He then follows up by asking whose birthday we celebrate at Christmas with the answer being Jesus, of course. He then asks if it's weird for us to get all the presents on Jesus' birthday and him to not get any. The next point is how we give presents to Jesus and it follows the Matthew 25 logic of if we give to "the least of these," then we're giving to Jesus. So we're going to try some of that too with Kinsey. Not sure exactly how yet, but that's something we're trying to work into her thought process.
To me, one of the biggest stumbling blocks to following Jesus is materialism and the drive for more stuff. I hope that's something we can help Kinsey and Connor try to avoid in their pursuit of being his disciples.
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2 comments:
Makes me long for the days when the CofC ingnored Christ's birth altogether so that we could feel no guilt in and give no thought to spending more than we had, neglecting the disenfranchised and "consuming" mass quatities. Ah, the nostalgia of it all!
A friend in our Sunday School class recounted to us that every year her family has a Jesus stocking in which each person places something they want to give him or something he might want. I thought that was an awesome idea, and a wonderful teaching tool for children.
And don't forget that we give gifts to Jesus year-round, gifts of all kinds -- but it will never seem sufficient since there's no way we can out-give him.
And, last but not least, be filled with cheer! There's no guilt or shame in that!
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