Much to Darling Wife’s joy, I have been spending this evening cleaning up a stack of files several years old. Purging, condensing, and refiling. Though not as much “purging” as Wife would like.
While perusing my accumulations of papers and articles over the years I came across this one. It is an essay that was written by Bill McKibben back in 1997. I found the concept interesting and worth thinking about when I read his essay the first time and in reading it again this evening, in light of the current societal economic mess, this idea of his has even more application.
But beyond the money aspect, this piece touches on our understanding and belief in what Christmas is all about.
The headline from my copy (a reprint in the November 28, 1997 L.A. Times) reads A Holy Day of More and More Stuff and from the original (in Mother Jones November/December Issue) reads, The Christmas.
Mr. McKibben begins:
I know what I’ll be doing on Christmas Eve. My wife, my 4-year-old daughter, my dad, my brother, and I will snowshoe out into the woods in late afternoon, ready to choose a hemlock or a balsam fir and saw it down — I’ve had my eye on three or four likely candidates all year. We’ll bring it home, shake off the snow, decorate it, and then head for church, where the Sunday school class I help teach will gamely perform this year’s pageant. (Last year, along with the usual shepherds and wise people, it featured a lost star talking on a cell phone.) And then it’s home to hang stockings, stoke the fire, and off to bed. As traditional as it gets, except that there’s no sprawling pile of presents under the tree.
Several years ago, a few of us in the northern New York and Vermont conference of the United Methodist Church started a campaign for what we called “Hundred Dollar Holidays.” The church leadership voted to urge parishioners not to spend more than $100 per family on presents, to rely instead on simple homemade gifts and on presents of services — a back rub, stacking a cord of firewood. That first year I made walking sticks for everyone. Last year I made spicy chicken sausage. My mother has embraced the idea by making calendars illustrated with snapshots she’s taken.
Read the whole thing here. Then come back an offer your thoughts. Do you or could you spend only $100 for Christmas?
I think the hardest thing for us is the expectations of going in together with other family members for gifts. If we didn’t contribute to a gift for someone, well, I’m not sure how it would go over. It would definitely make it harder for them because they’d either have to contribute more in our place or choose another gift.
Other than that, when I can, I enjoy making and receiving homemade gifts. There’s a piece of the creator that goes into that gift.
By the way, I’m dying to read Culture-Making (speaking of)–how is it?
Heather’s last blog post..Movies and Theology: Horton Hears a Who
That is the difficulty…dealing with family members and/or current traditions. But then the question to ask it what can be done, taught, spoken about, to the family as a whole to try things differently the following year. This would be especially difficult if you were the only one buying into (no pun intended) more frugal, consumer driven Christmas.
As for Culture-Making…I have just scratched the surface…will update as interesting things arise…I very much like what I have read so far.
Thanks for the visit…