Like everyone else, I'm getting a start on Christmas. With the last trick-or-treaters now done for the evening, their evening plunder in hand and refined sugars pulsing through their veins, Christmas season has arrived. Yes, there's the little matter of Thanksgiving, with it's football games and stuffing recipes and perhaps a family gathering, but Thanksgiving is merely a preamble to Christmas. Even while the Turkey's still in the oven, Santa is hijacking the Macy's Thanksgiving day parade and people are setting their alarms for black friday. We are preparing for what we do best in our culture - getting stuff.
The R.H. Macy Company, with it's revamped (and co-opted) Santa Claus, was not the first to hijack what we now think of as the Christmas season. It was actually the Christians who did this. Yuletide was a yearly solstice festival celebrated in northern Europe exclusively by the pagans as far back as 700-800 AD, wherein the Julian calendar marked December 25th as the shortest day of the year and the day when light returned to the world. Though there are conflicting reports on exactly how it happened, the story was that in 1521, a German Lutheran held the first Christmas tree decoration by Christians to replace (what he believed was) a blasphemous spiritual observation with the true "tree of Christ". So, I guess, more specifically, it's the Lutherans who hijacked Christmas :). Other accounts suggest that in many places the pagans were so powerful and influential that the Christians decided to join them instead of trying to convert them. Eventually the Christians became so prominent that their definition of the yuletide season became what most poeple in mainstream culture now observe as "Christmas". Nevertheless, the Christians did, quite literally and effectively, "troll the ancient yuletide carol". As a Christian, I feel compelled to acknowledge that and offer an olive (conifer?) branch to my pagan brothers and sisters.
Nonetheless, just because Mary is more likely to have laid Jesus in a manger sometime in the Spring rather than in December doesn't mean that the Christian messages shared at Christmas time aren't important. (We all inherit imperfect history - remember that the very land we walk upon was also not originally owned by European cultures). Despite the vagaries of Christmas' origins, I am not interested in throwing the Christ child out with the bathwater. In the end, the Christmas season is about learning, and relearning, the gift of giving. It's about hope in dark times. It's about the light of love and peace coming back and filling what my friend calls God-sized holes in our lives.
Which brings me to the "Gimmies". This is a wonderful Berenstein Bears book wherein the young cubs go along with mom to the shopping mall and get a case of "the gimmies". Wanting toys and candy, they resort to rolling around on the floor like tormented devil-children when they don't get their way. I highly recommend this book - and not just for kids. I guarantee you it's a really short read, and very effective at reminding us just how important it is to appreciate everything, no matter how small, in our life. This book tells us that being consumed by our desire to consume is a source of incredible unhappiness - a moment when we are filling the God-sized hole in our lives with something less than our own spiritual truth. While learning to recieve gifts graciously is important and not what I'm challenging here, basing happiness on what you get from the world is a source of suffering.
I am reminded of a buddhist monk I encountered during the time I lived in Thailand, who would talk about the cloth used for his robe. Though monks are well known for living the simple life, he openly boasted about how fine of a cloth he used for his one saffron robe. He talked about painstakingly searching out the finest and most beautiful piece of cloth obtainable. When asked why someone as humble as a monk would adorn themselves with such finery, he explained that an enlightened life did not mean robbing meaning and enjoyment from all earthly things - it meant fully enjoying and appreciating the meaning of all things in our lives.
Look around your house. I mean it. Get up and walk around to each room - the garage, the storage closets - everything. Take stock of all your stuff. You're supposed to have done this already. In fact, you're supposed to have it written down somewhere.. you know.. in case your house burns down and you need to report it to the insurance company. How long would it take you to just write down all the stuff you had? Overwhelmed? Well, then go here and laugh about it all. Remember to laugh.. none of this is judgement, it's awareness. With awareness, I hope, comes the ability to laugh at ourselves. How much does the stuff in our lives really fill our spiritual selves? Yes, we use that wok pan, and it's good to have the fondue maker just in case in 2015 we decide we have to have a fondue party. Or that book about learning Chinese, or the 15 flower vases, or the 52" flatscreen TV that was the upgrade over the 48" flatscreen TV. I won't even start with exercise equipment. Now, despite all the stuff you still have, think about all the stuff you still think you want, or need. What would you put on your Christmas list? What will fill the hole in your life right now? As you do this, think about all the things you've bought in the last year (or the last week). How much have those things contributed to your life? Can you even remember them?
Like that monk with only a single saffron robe, two millenia ago there was a couple wandering the countryside with very little. They had nothing but a donkey, a few supplies, and a baby to be born. When Jesus was born, even the kings who came brought only things that could be easily carried, and I'm sure the last thing Mother Mary was thinking about was gold and incense. She was giving birth - creating life - bringing a new light into the darkness. She was giving a gift of life, and in doing so, was receiving the most precious gift of all - somone to love. Even outside of the Chiristan story, this is the most powerful story in the world. It is the story of giving life and learning the gifts of love.
Just as you took stock of all of your possessions, now take a moment and take stock of all of your moments of giving and receiving over the last year (or the last week). How much has this contributed to your life? The note you wrote to someone who was sad, or the prayer you prayed, or the time you volunteered your time for a friend, or a stranger - what has this brought to your life? Be selfish - really ask yourself if it meant something to you personally and not just because "it was the right thing to do". Compare, with the things on your Christmas lists, that smile on the face of a someone blessed by your gifts, or the joy you received from writing that thoughtful letter, or that time you spent with your grandmother, or your children, or somebody in a time of need. How many of those dollars you have given to charity would you like to get a refund on - how many hours spent with someone you love would you like back to do something else? Compare the life where you did none of these things, with the life you actually lived. How does this life of giving feel? This is what it means to be overwhlemed with, not the Gimmies, but "the Givies". And i'm guessing it feels pretty good.
My prayer for each of you is that, at Christmas time, you get an incurable case of "the Givies", because this will beat any deal that black friday, or Macy's, or anyone else trying to sell you "Christmas", can possibly come up with.
Don't fill the holes in your life with anything less.
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