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Admit it, parents: Part of you dreads asking
your children what they want for Christmas. It’s not that you don’t like
giving, nor is it miserliness or fear of shopping. Well, maybe a little fear of
shopping, but the real pickle is how quickly wants turn into needs and needs to
demands.
I remember Christmas some years ago when our
children were about 3 and 4, probably the first that they both had a rough idea
of what the holiday meant present-wise. They each named an item they wanted,
but as the day drew near they began to waffle, repeatedly scratching the last
wish and substituting another.
After a half dozen switches it dawned on my
wife and me that the kids believed they would receive one present each. I
thought this was sweet, or maybe I just hoped it would last a decade or two. In
truth their notion was nothing more benign than naïvete and they soon learned
that while the list could be longer than one, the end was negotiable.
On the scale of what people like most about
Christmas, these debates hover somewhere down around fruitcake. We lessen our
aggravation by asking the kids to single out the item they want most, then to
list their second tier of wants. We commit to get the top picks, within reason,
and to spend the same amount in total on each of them. I always hope they won’t
think to commission an audit, but we manage to keep it close.
We also strive to keep their focus on the real
significance of Christmas, too easily lost in the holiday hubbub. So it was
with joy that I knew what my daughter meant when she explained that this year
there is not one but two gifts she must have. She would ask, I knew, for a
donation to the Salvation Army in memory of her grandfather, and another to the
ALS Association (for Lou Gehrig’s disease) in the name of her grandmother. All
other gifts will be optional.
An option she surely knows we will exercise,
but her request is sincere all the same. In past years the receipts for these
donations have hung on her bulletin board for months, bobbing above magazine
clippings, photos of friends, band posters, and the other flotsam of teen life,
prominent long after other gifts have been put away. They seem buoys of
kindness, floating atop a sea of the ordinary.
We have all heard that it is more blessed to
give than to receive. It is said often this time of year, usually as a tag line
in advertisements pushing those “must have” Christmas gifts. I suppose that few
people look to commercials for spiritual guidance, but those who do will miss
the point.
The full passage in Acts 20:33-35 quotes Paul
citing Jesus: “I have not coveted anyone’s silver or gold or clothing. You
yourselves know that these hands of mine have supplied my own needs and the
needs of my companions. In everything I did, I showed you that by this kind of
hard work we must help the weak, remembering the words the Lord Jesus himself
said, ‘It is more blessed to give than to receive.’”
Giving to family and friends is wonderful and
gratifying, but blessing comes from serving the weak. Who are the weak?
Arguably everyone in one way or another, but kindness to those who can do
nothing for or to the giver is perhaps the highest form of generosity.
And that comes close to the true meaning of Christmas, which many celebrate as
the birth of one
© 1997- 2002 Brent Morrison
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