Poor Thanksgiving, that forgotten holiday lost between the better-dressed holidays of Halloween and Christmas...
Ok, I'm done with that lament. I actually have something to say about Christmas.
A week or so ago I was reading On the Banks of Plum Creek, by Laura Ingalls Wilder, with Rachel. We were reading about Christmas. Laura and Mary wanted to give something very special to Baby Carrie (now a toddler) that year. Ma offered them all of her buttons to choose from so that they could make a button string for Carrie. Ma's button collection was made up of buttons that she had been saving since she was a little girl and even buttons that her mother had saved as a little girl. (That part right there is enough to get me going on materialism and short attention spans of today.) Laura and Mary looked on them as vast and incredible treasure. Every day while Carrie napped the girls tried out different buttons in different combinations and different arrangements. On and off went those buttons until it was the day before Christmas. When Carrie found the button string in her stocking the next day she was wild with joy.
Seriously. Can you imagine being wild with joy over a button string? I've read other stories of Laura's life in which she and Mary got oranges for Christmas and considered it a precious and exotic gift.
Perhaps it's crossed your mind that the Christmas we celebrate is too commercial, too expensive, too over the top. It's crossed mine; I won't lie. But I've been thinking that maybe the fault doesn't lie with Christmas. Perhaps the problem is with the rest of the year. If you, or your child, wants/needs a new dress, do you wait for it to be Christmas to go get it? Nope. You just go and get it. If you want a new game even you just go out and get it. It is really Christmas all year long. New socks? Get a package of six. New CD? Download it in your itunes in about 5 minutes.
See what I'm saying? Christmas almost HAS to be crazy with stuff you don't need just to seem like it's something special. To Laura and Mary life was made up of so much more than stuff during the rest of the year that an orange really was exotic. It is kind of funny that people get all worked up about the materialism of Christmas, but don't notice that that's pretty much how it always is around here.
Maybe we should shed some stuff in March and September and build meaning in our lives with something other than "stuff" in February and October. I bet Christmas would become more holy without even trying.
4 comments:
I agree! I read on a support group site that I belong to, that in one family they only get 3 gifts for Christmas because that is what Baby Jesus got. Three gifts from the 3 wise men. I thought that was a neat idea.
And with Blake's bday being so close to Christmas (Dec 20) it makes it even more difficult to "tone it down".
You have given me cause to think... what if we waited? What if instead of asking "Do I really need this?" We said, "I'll wait and get it for Christmas." How much "STUFF" would we have? How many things would be still "have to have" after waiting months?
Our pastor did a sermon on "stuff" and how when we die it all becomes someone else's stuff so what's the point?
Hmmm.... my mind is reeling.
Peace.
Jo
My parent's who are like frugal-meisters always had this totally stringent (or at least we thought it was) dollar limit on Christmas gifts. Of couse, they always had a totally stringent dollar limit on everything (school shopping, birthdays, random purchases, etc). And I think it made us more grateful and we all really got into decorating for Christmas, making Christmas cookies (except Jeff hated that), programs at church and school, music, etc. Also some of my more fond memories of Christmas growing up was this elaborate present search that Jeff and I organized every year and my mom caught on and would hide our gifts in totally bizare places every year to give us a challenge. When we got too smart about where our presents were going, she would just wrap them as soon as she bought them and put codes on the packages and then it was Lisa and my job (we were the math geeks) to break my mom's much math geekier code and figure out whose presents were whose so we could shake them and press them and do all those kinds of things that kids do. Actually, getting our presents was always a little anti-climatic somehow not really that important (except we probably needed the socks, we also always got new tootbrushes for Christmas).
Anyway, I never realized how little emphasis we put on presents until I celebrated with another family last Christmas (since we couldn't go to either Brian or my parents houses) and those kids got lots of practical gifts and home-made gifts, and they were SOOOO happy with their gifts. Every game had to be played immeadiately, every sock was torn from the package, tried on, and pranced about the room. I mean, talk about true spirit of Christmas! So, I guess I don't have any brilliant ideas of how to make that happen, but I think yours is a good/useful one. We do have way, way, way too much. Of everything.
i'm really thinking i'm going to get of way easy this year. my son says he's hoping santa will bring him a game "don't spill the beans" which costs about $5. and my daughter says she thinks santa will bring her some silky ribbons (about $0.42 if i get a whole yard of it).
I think it helps that they don't see many commercials or catelogs. their expectations are way low.
Noah's birthday is 2 months after Christmas and he gets lots of stuff and he is only 2. I enjoy buying stuff for people and giving gifts so I know that I am to blame for the accumulation of stuff. but I do think that our society has made Christmas a consumer holiday and the real meaning has been forgotten. This year we are starting a new family tradition and will be doing advent and keeping the true meaning of Christmas at the forefront. I want Noah to understand what Christmas is really about not what our consumerism has turned it into!
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