Approaching the holidays with peace and perspective

I am working, slowly, on the second posting about scheduling life. One friend has enouraged me to keep writing about it, so I will--thanks, friend!--but as I sit here ready to type while E is sleeping and the girls are momentarily happily coloring at the kitchen table, I find there is something else on my mind that I want to write about first.

The topic is reclaiming Christmas. There are SO many ways I have been re-thinking this holiday, changing my attitudes and expectations, and making new, more healthy traditions. I hope to share some of the best parts of this with you readers between now and Christmas. For today, I want to focus on wise consumership during the holidays--not just reining in over-spending, but actually challenging and maybe changing our perspectives on gift-giving and how we show (or don't show!) love to one another through gift-giving. And putting the focus of Christmas back on the Christ child and love and family and joy and peace.

I don't really have much to SAY about this--there are too many other people who have already said it better than I could. For example, the "Reverend" Billy from the brilliant documentary What Would Jesus Buy?:



"Reverend" Billy is not a pastor--I don't even think he is Christian. He is an actor with passion about the glut and greed of our overly consumeristic society in America, and has a "schtick" that not only grabs people's attention but also hits at a true spirtual void in our culture.

Or the grass-roots movement dear to my heart, the Advent Conspiracy, which helps put spending in a real-world perspective and suggests a framework for remodeling our celebrations around what really matters:



Or Trade as One, which will be hosting a fair-trade bazaar at Vintage Faith this upcoming Sunday, who encourages you to use your spending to help make the world a better place:



In Christmases past, I have been discouraged and frustrated by many aspects of gift-giving, and have felt disconnected from the real meaning of the season. I have felt like a real grinch, being ungrateful for the gifts I was receiving, and having no joy as I shopped for others out of guilt but not a desire to love them through giving. Or having too much fun selecting the "perfect" gift for someone (i.e. what I like, or what I think they "need") but refusing to give them what I knew they would really want. These attitudes reflect many things: how I have sinned against the Christmas Spirit, if you will, by making the focus on me and my wants. How I have been wounded by some people using Christmas "giving" to send a negative message to me. How deep in me is a legitimate spiritual ache for a better way to "celebrate" Christmas--one that cherishes what is worth cherishing, and nourishes the human spirit instead of draining and deflating it (or overpadding it!). But with all these different things I was feeling for year after year, I seriously thought it was just me, and there was nothing to do about it.

Each of the three video clips I shared above represent FREEDOM for me. First came the documentary, which I am not sure many people saw but which I want all of my loved ones to see. I realized that I was not alone in my despair about Christmas gift-giving, and had newfound courage to take a stand against some things we had been doing for years that we did not want to do but felt like we had to do--like get a small stack of presents for certain family members, instead of just one nice, meaningful gift. Because a small stack of gifts represents how much we love them, right?

The Advent Conspiracy took these basic realizations and made them more personal, more spiritual, and gave a postive goal to take the place of the old gift giving.

Then this year Trade as One takes the ideas one step further--now that we have addressed reigning in rampant spending, and better, more meaningful alternatives, we can consider how to be purposeful in buying the things we are going to buy. Actually using spending money (which we are going to be doing, just hopefully with wisdom and love and restraint) to help others around the globe.

Christmas just keeps getting better and better.

*The Trade as One boutique will be this Sunday, November 15 from 10:00 a.m. until 9:30 p.m. in the room directly opposite the sanctuary. Local friends, consider stopping by!