This is Part II of a ???-part series reflecting on Christmas, consumerism, religion, politics, and Kingdom economics. Click here to read Part I: Black Friday.
Yesterday I reflected a little bit on Black Friday and the irony that is celebrating the birth of a humble Savior by engaging in orgies of consumption and stress that only make the rich richer and the poor poorer. My basic question was this:
Shouldn’t Christian believers – those who take the story of the Advent and Christ’s birth to heart – be offering another way? When the world is crying out for justice and compassion, isn’t God calling us to sacrifice of ourselves to make this happen?
So today, I think I’m going to get down to brass tacks: What’s the alternative? What can we as Christians do during the Christmas season to offer a true witness to the one who fills the hungry with good things and sends the rich away empty, as Mary sings in the Magnificat?
I’m going to suggest here that we, as American Christians, need to seriously rethink what we’re doing during the Christmas season. The metaphor I’d like to play around with today is this: If Christmas is a celebration of the birthday of Jesus Christ, shouldn’t He be getting all the presents?
No, I’m not talking about taking all the money you’d spend on gifts this year and giving them to your local church – though if that’s where you feel led, go do so and be blessed. But for the rest of us, we have to ask ourselves: if we can’t literally give of our material gifts to Christ Himself, shouldn’t we give them to the people Christ identifies with? The Gospels make it clear who Christ declares to be His chief concern during His life on earth: the poor, the meek, the oppressed, the outsiders, the peacemakers, the widows and orphans and foreigners in our midst.
Note, if you will, who’s absent from that list, who receives (directly or indirectly) Christ’s proclamations of woe: the rich, the “high priests” (whether religious or political), the money-changers, the oppressive and occupying Roman authorities. When the rich young ruler comes to Jesus, He tells him to sell everything he owns, because it’s easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich person to enter the Kingdom.
So I think we should be asking this question: Who’s getting gifts from us this year? Of course we’d answer, “Well, my friends and family are, obviously.” Sure, but who else? I had to buy that sweater or that Blu-Ray player or that iPod somewhere – who got the money? Was it the miner who mined the raw material, or the worker who put it together in the factory, or the trucker who drove it across the country, or the person in the retail uniform who rung it up for me?
And if it wasn’t these people – the people who actually did the work to get what I bought into my hands and into the wrapping paper – then who did get my gift?
Do we as Christians have a responsibility to ensure that we only patronize businesses and companies that pay their workers a fair wage, that give their workers ample time off in order to have lives outside of work, that have basic safety standards? Do we have a responsibility as Christians to look for the union label, to inform ourselves about the business practices of the companies we buy from, to look at reports on things like CEO pay and corporate governance and factory conditions and outsourcing?
Further (and I don’t know if I can make a theological case for this), do we as American Christians have some kind of responsibility – call it patriotic, call it looking out for your neighbor, whatever – to make an effort to buy from companies that pay American workers a fair wage?
And finally, returning back to the metaphor we started with here: If, on the celebration of Jesus Christ’s birthday, we’re going to give our presents to the people He identifies with, should we as Christians be buying more stuff for ourselves and one another at all?
More questions, fewer answers. We’ll continue tomorrow or Monday.
Hello!
I give Christmas gifts only to children, because it seems to me that most adults I know of have too much things already.
It is not right that Christmas is only about the birth of Christ, because here in Norway and other “northy” places, we have from ancient times had an “after- winter-solstice” celebration. Without this holiday, the dark and cold wintertime had been unbearable her
This year I’ve decided to join “The Friends of the Pine Ridge Children” to give hope and appreciation to children who really need it.
If you’re talking about the Friends of the Pine Ridge Reservation – a group that seeks justice for the Lakota nation, who suffer under crippling poverty and unemployment and are undoubtedly among the victims of America’s success (a sin for which we European-descended Americans should repent and try to make right) – that’s an excellent group. They do wonderful work.
Anyone else who might be interested in donating to the Friends of the Pine Ridge Reservation, here’s a link.
That’s an interesting perspective… what sorts of things do you give the children? I don’t have a lot of children in my life right now – as a grad student I don’t often find myself in environments with a lot of kids around – but I can see why giving them things would bring them joy. At the same time, though, I have to wonder whether we’re inculcating them at an early age with the sense that acquisitiveness and consumerism are okay. What practices might we introduce into the way Christians raise children to counteract the cultural messages they’re receiving?
I also think it’s definitely worth noting the history of Christmas, which is an adaptation of pagan holidays celebrating the Solstice or mid-winter (Yule, etc.). A lot of our holiday traditions are syntheses of Christian symbolism and symbolism from the pre-Christian religious/cultural practices of the European peoples.
At the same time, though, those other rituals were about hearth and home, about bringing the family together and celebrating despite the bitter cold and difficulty of survival. I think those things are quite compatible with Christianity and with the celebration of the birth of a humble Savior. Acquisitiveness and consumerism aren’t.
Yes, the old pagan celebration was about bringing the family together and have lot of good food and a holiday time. In my childhood (I’m a mother of 48 now) we children could get a pair of bigger crosscountry ski, new winther clothes, a funny game to play with – useful things that children nowadays would get outside Christmas time and not as gifts. We lived frugally the rest of the year, being eight children in the family! When I talk with my daughter of 18, it seems we lived in the dinosur-times..:))
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[...] on Christmas, consumerism, religion, politics, and Kingdom economics. Part I: Black Friday Part II: Who Gets the Gift? Part III: O Come, O Come [...]