'Tis Still the Season

This Christmas Season is not typical of Christmas’ past. As Jeff mentioned in his last post, we are doing something different this year. Instead of showering each other in gifts, we’ve decided to give our budgeted amount to charity. More specifically, we’re giving to our church and to World Vision. And we feel really good about it!

For me, this is a really big thing. I grew up in poverty and still remember very meager Christmas’, wondering when I was little, why Santa didn’t like me as much as he did other kids (my childish mind equated gifts with care), and when I was older, understanding that there were many times we would have had few gifts, if not for local charities like the Salvation Army. I grew up determined that when I was married and had a family of my own, there would be a ton of gifts under the tree. And there were.

But this year is different. This year I’m different. There’ll still be gifts under the tree, but they’ll be for Sweet Pea. Our gift this year is in the giving. Previously for me, it was like I had to have lots of gifts under the tree, to prove that I’m not that same little poor girl that I was. It was evidence of sort that I had risen above the social status of my family. It was validation that I was indeed of worth. Of course, as a Christian, I knew this, but deep down the little girl inside of me, needed the affirmation of that.

Something happened though, to change that. Of course it was God, ultimately, who broke off that misconception and gave me freedom from that bondage. And it really was bondage. But what is surprising to me is how He did it. He used the broken-down U.S. economy and all of the doom and gloom media reports. As I watched the news, and Wall Street, I realized I was witnessing what greed had done. I further realized how good we Americans have it, even when we don’t have it all that good by our own standards. One of the great casualties of this distressed economy is that charitable giving has really gone down, while the need for it has risen significantly.

Like most American’s, we are worse off financially right now than we were at the beginning of the year. Consequently, we were scaling back our Christmas budget, but that didn’t seem like enough. Something was just – missing. So we talked about it and we remembered that Christmas isn’t supposed to be about getting, but rather it’s about giving. After all, God gave Jesus to us and that is why we even have Christmas to celebrate.

We then had a sort of epiphany. We understood that we could give each other gifts that would be nice and appreciated, but honestly not really significant or we could give in a way that would make a real and lasting difference in the lives of others. Once we thought of it that way, it was easy to decide what to do. By choosing to give to others and really make a difference in their lives, instead of collecting more stuff, has given me a freedom that I didn’t even know I was lacking. Praise God!

I don’t know if we’ll do this again next year. I certainly don’t think it is wrong to exchange gifts. But for us, this year, the gift we’re receiving is the sense that we've done something that truly matters and our Father will be saying to us, “Well done, my good and faithful children.” Merry Christmas!