And that makes this season awful.

Awful you say? Yes. Terrible. Agonizing. At our home, we don’t tag our Christmas presents. No labels of any kind. That means that the giver and the receiver have to both be able to identify the gift as being from the one to the other. It makes generic gifts impossible. We have to spend a great deal of time thinking about and worrying over every gift we give. It’s made Christmas morning a magical time and put the focus on the giving instead of the receiving, which in a family of ten is critical to prevent Christmas from becoming a festival of unbridled hedonism.

But therein lies a problem as well. I have adult children now. Well, Alexander is pretty much an adult. He’s 19. The others of the Three Musketeers are 16 and 14, respectively, so they are also people now, with their own interests and ideas. But because we live together and share a lot of DNA, their interests and mine coincide fairly closely much of the time. So when researching cool things to give them, I inevitably find a whole host of things I want. For me.

And I cannot buy them. No, it’s worse than that. I cannot even really talk about them. We don’t make traditional Christmas lists in our home, either. We have lists, all right, but they are of the things we intend to give, not the things we want to receive. So while I can come home and tell my wife I found this incredible new science-fiction series by Kristine Katherine Rusch, of which I have only read the first book, having done so I cannot now buy the remainder of those books, used, on Amazon, for practically nothing, because I know that from the middle of November to the end of December, she is listening with great attention to everything I say, for just such an inkling of what I might want to receive on Christmas morning.

All that is great. But because I’m doing so MUCH research, that series is far, far from the only thing I’m going to evidence interest in. Ordinarily, I’d just buy the stuff if I really want it and it fits my budget. But this time of year, I can’t do that. So what we have every day is a constantly expanding list of things I know I would enjoy and really want to buy, and an ever-shrinking list of things I actually CAN buy, so as not to obscure the gifts my family might give me.

And on Christmas morning, inevitably, I will find that nobody was listening to that particular discussion about that particular thing, that everyone has gotten me stuff I love and cherish, but not that particular thing, and I could have been reading and/or enjoying that thing I wanted for the last six weeks with an untroubled conscience.

It sucks.

In a good way.

If you’re looking to kick off your Christmas season with something you’ll remember more than how many dollars you saved on that flatscreen, I have a suggestion.

A very good friend of mine, one of the Group here, has been given an ultimatum by her mortgage company to raise a ridiculous sum by the middle of this week. Rather than ask for handouts, she and her mother, who lives with her family, have made a boatload of the best tamales ever, and they’re selling them to try to raise enough to get the mortgage company off her back.

My family decided that this year, we’d donate some of our Christmas budget to our good friend Olivia.  We bought 60, which should feed even our family three or four times, for $100. I’m asking you to do what you can do. Anything will help. You go here to buy your tamales or make a contribution.

In Mere Christianity, CS Lewis says that in his opinion, you should be giving away so much to others that there are things that you wish you could do that you can’t. Here’s the quotation:

”I am afraid the only safe rule is to give more than we can spare…If our charities do not at all pinch or hamper us,… they are too small.  There ought to be things we should like to do and cannot do because our charitable expenditures exclude them.”

I believe this as well. Please, for my friend, won’t you consider adding her to your list of those you’re giving to this year?

At the stroke of midnight on the night of October 31, one of the local radio stations (heck, it might be more than one) begins playing Christmas music.  Not an occasional tune, mind you, but constant, unremitting Christmas music 24/7.

In nearly every store, as of this morning, there will be Christmas displays replacing the Hallowe’en ones, changing everything from orange and black to red and green and white.  There will be nearly ubiquitous Stuffed Santa and reindeer, candy canes, and badly flocked evergreens.  No, not will be.  There are.  Right now.  Retailers, desperate for cashflow, will be especially aggressive this year in trying to get us to forget November altogether, and the quaint Norman Rockwell drawings of a family Christmas with a few handmade gifts ever earlier give way to CHRISTMAS, the Shopping Season, and its outlandish displays of computerized cheer.

Being huge fans of Thanksgiving and especially its attendant holiday Pie Night, we resist this Yule Tide.  I ordinarily have the aforementioned radio station on my presets, but I take it off on Hallowe’en and put it back the day after Thanksgiving.  We will have browns and greens in our home decorating, but no reds (multiple reasons for this), and we will not be playing Christmas music of any kind.  If we acquire presents for people, they will remain unwrapped, or at the very least well hidden.  We hurry past all Christmas displays.  We leave shops that play Christmas music as fast as we can.

We are not anti-Christmas.  We love Christmas.  No one I know celebrates the season harder than we do.  But I am a fan of taking the seasons as they come.  When it is cold I do not wish for summer, and when it’s hot I rarely long for snow.  I don’t much care for Halloween, but I would oppose ignoring it in favor of Thanksgiving, even though the latter is my favorite holiday.  I vehemently oppose the annexation of Thanksgiving by Christmas, and even if we are the only free and independent island of Thanksgiving celebration in a vast ocean of the Christmas Borg, we will nonetheless refuse to be assimilated.

Our society spends a lot of time wishing for things.  When it’s Monday, we wish it were Wednesday.  Wednesday we celebrate because we’re halfway to the weekend, the blessed weekend.  We spend five days a week longing for the other two, then spend those two dreading the coming five.  When it’s hot we want cold and when it’s cold and snowy all we can think about is how great July is.  This is not just disturbing.  It’s destructive.  Whole populations never live their lives at all, spending their time in a dark theater of the mind watching previews of coming attractions, waiting for a feature presentation that never begins.

What a spectacular waste.

Probably I’m making too much of this.  Probably I’m just annoyed because the growing majority of “Christmas” music is so very, very bad – we really needed Beyonce’s take on “White Christmas”?  I mean, really? – and more than likely this Short Take will be met with Fred-like howls that Scrooge should lighten up.  After all, there are powerful forces at work in Christmas that are present in no other major holiday, and not all of those forces have evil designs.  Christmas has the power to make us more cheerful and more kind, and who couldn’t use an increase of that, especially this year?

Besides which, although I protest, observant readers will also know that I am compromised in my complaining, because a part of me resides with the enemy.  If you look closely at my car, you’ll see evidence that I may secretly be in league with the All-Year Christmasers.  There is something curious hanging from  my rear-view mirror, every day, all year ’round.

It’s a jingle bell.

But this post isn’t about Santa Claus, at least not directly. It’s about what else I believe about Christmas, which is that it is the greatest holiday ever conceived for anything. This is appropriate, since it commemorates the greatest event ever.

As previously posted, I deplore the fact that the Christmas bustle starts sometime in October, since Thanksgiving is not a marketing holiday. In fact, Thanksgiving is only used by retailers (other than grocery stores, bless them) as a convenient marker for the kickoff of the Rumble in the Aisles, the massive Friday-after-Turkey discount extravaganza that never fails to get Orlando on the map for largest number of people arrested at WalMart.

This type of behavior is exactly what the religious types among us bemoan at the Most Wonderful Time of the Year. It’s a Christmas sale, for crying out loud. Peace on Earth, people. But no. The struggle to get that one more thing seems to drown out the Reason for the Season, and that leads to an unbelievable amount of hand-wringing and sanctimonious preaching from the devout that the Real Meaning of Christmas Has Been Forgotten. Woe be unto us!

Let’s deal with the reason for the season then, just to get it out of the way. Christmas, as you might expect if you’ve ever looked at the word, has to do with Christ. It is, in fact, the Mass of Christ, the celebration of the birth of the Savior of Mankind into the world. I won’t retell the story, because if you don’t know it, even if you are Jewish, then you’ve lived your whole life on Mars. But it’s a true story, and a deeply important one. It’s so important in fact, that it shines through even modern society’s very highly-developed methods of obscuring it.

I once had a discussion with a friend of mine who is a borderline agnostic (raised one religion, now regularly attends no church, but is pretty sure there’s a God). We were discussing the foreknowledge of God, and how we could be free to choose our own path in this life if there was an omniscient being who already knew what we were going to do. It occurred to me that if God were not omniscient, if He were not in complete command of the situation, if He were not able to make all things – all things – work together for good for them that believe, that I would have no interest in worshipping Him. What kind of God is surprised, or even occasionally outmaneuvered? Wouldn’t you want your God to be better than you are?

Man, I sure would.

Fortunately, God is actually God, and that means that He’s got things pretty well in hand, whatever we do to rain death and destruction and misery down on ourselves. This would include the birth of His Son, I think. There is no way He is surprised that the events surrounding His Son’s condescension have spawned a two-monthlong marketing bonanza that makes the heathen feasts that used to mark the end of the year look like a ladies cotillion. This has not caught God off guard. He is still God, and He is still running things.

And He’s smarter than we think.

Yes, we hear from the pulpit over and over how we’ve lost the Spirit of the Season, that Santa Claus has replaced the babe in the manger, how we concern ourselves far more with Decking the Halls than with having an occasional Silent Night to contemplate the birth that makes the holiday happen in the first place. But do we?

Here’s a line at WalMart at 11pm the week of Christmas. There are enormous carts filled with magical – truly, folks, magical – goodies of every type and description. It’s late and it’s a work day and everyone is tired, including the cashier. Someone fumbles with her purse and the change goes spilling across the floor like candy from a broken jar. The woman tiredly reaches down and starts chasing the glittering coins, but she isn’t alone. Everyone in line is on the floor with her, smiling, scooping copper and zinc back into her purse. Except one man, who reaches across while she’s down there, zips his card through the reader, punches in his PIN, winks at the cashier, and puts the small sacks of her goodies into her cart. Bends down and scrabbles on the floor with the rest of us. When the woman stands up her bill is paid and no one will own up to having done it. The cashier wishes her a Merry Christmas and out the door she goes, bewildered and grateful and tearful. As are we all.

Tell me you’re going to see that in March.

Here’s something else. The line is longish, and especially after something like that, people get to talking. I ask the man in front of me “so, what you got there?” He smiles and says “my mother has been complaining about her feet the last couple of months, saying that they’re always cold. So I got this whirlpool-style foot massager that heats the water.” “That ought to handle it,” I say. “Yep. I think it will.” He goes on to show me, as we shuffle forward, a half-dozen other items in the cart, one for his little girl, some for his twin boys, a couple of little candies for his wife. It occurs to me, a little at a time, the way the sun rises, that his $230 basket of gifts contains not one thing – not one thing – for himself. We’ve talked for 15 minutes and he hasn’t said a word about himself. I don’t even know his name.

There are perhaps 20 people in this line, and there are 4 of these lines in this store, and there are 3900 Wal Marts in the US. And every single cart is filled with things for people other than the ones doing the buying. Every purchase is a gift.

I’m sure this happens in August, too. On some other planet.

If giving to others is the forgetting of oneself, and if the forgetting of oneself is the path to finding oneself, if the surest path to God is the caring for others, then somehow, miracle of miracles, God has contrived it so that the entire hedonistic season points men back to Him.

I like giving gifts. I spend months planning them. I like buying things. I spend as freely as I possibly can, and I’m here to encourage you to do the same. Don’t be stupid. But do go all the way. Give what you truly wish to give and let January deal with the fallout. Giving with your heart is never – it is NEVER – a bad idea. If someone nags you about it, smile, be polite, and don’t pay them any attention. All the preaching and the moralizing probably has its place, too, but honestly, more often than not (and I am, myself, a fairly religious fellow) it seems like the preachers are telling us to stop having fun because they are worried that if they don’t personally put a stop to all this getting and spending that God will be unable to do His thing.

Wouldn’t you prefer a God that didn’t much need your help?

Well, good news. You have one.

Merry Christmas.

(Much of this post was originally written in December of 2005)

What we came up with was an expansion on an idea my father had when I was a kid. Presents began to show up under the tree, wrapped in newsprint, with no names on them. When one of those presents was passed out to the family (my brother was always the passer), we would all stop and look to see what it was, and see if we might want it. It was pretty much always a book, but in my family that was a prized gift. If you wanted it, you spoke up, and there was a discussion, then someone ended up with the gift. Those presents were somehow different than the others. There was less chaos when those were being opened, and they were always surprises. So we thought, why not do that for all the gifts?

We tried it. The first year was very difficult. It was even hard for the kids to imagine how it would work – what do you mean, I can’t put “From: Alexander To: Crispin”on the present? – but after a while it became clear that some important things were happening.

Right away, we discovered that we had to think much, much harder about what we wanted to give to others than we had before. Without the luxury of tagging the presents, the gifts had to tag themselves, that is, we had to give something so special and unique to the recipient that no matter who opened the gift, the recipient would know that it was for him, and – and this is the really hard part – he would also know who the gift was from. If that sounds impossible, don’t worry. We thought so, too.

We also saw that our Christmas preparations began much earlier, because unique gifts have to be purchased (or more often, made) when the opportunity strikes, even if that’s in July. Perhaps it was not a coincidence that Christmas Day itself started increasing in importance to the family, and becoming more and more special of a time. I’m not talking about the always-breathless stampede down the stairs to see what Santa brought (and yes, Santa still comes), but the part afterward, where we sit together and open our gifts. Now, instead of everyone grabbing his presents and opening them as fast as he can, the presents are opened one at a time, in some sort of rotation, and everyone watches to see what the gift is. You have to. What if it’s for you? And Christmas morning started lasting until the early afternoon.

The gifts themselves also mean more, naturally, since they are worried over and thought about for months. This means the people that get those gifts also mean more. We love what we serve, and we love more what we work for. More love was being poured into the gifts. Once, we had no money for gifts at all. This made practically no difference. The kids made gifts for each other and for us, and that Christmas remains one of the most memorable of our family’s history. The selfishness almost vanished. Instead of long lists of stuff the kids wanted, we had long conversations with each child about his siblings, and what they might like to receive. Instead of “I can’t wait to open my presents”, we heard “I can’t wait until you open my gift to you!”

Last year, we went to a Christmas expo/festival kind of thing, and as we walked in, each of our children was handed a “Christmas list”, with twenty or so blanks for writing in what they wanted for Christmas. On the reverse side was a list of what needed to be given to others. There were maybe four blanks. One of our children took this list, looked at it, and said “I’m supposed to want four times as much stuff as I’m giving to other people? What a waste of time,” and threw the list in the trash.

It takes more of our time, and we have to be very involved as parents in what our children are giving to each other. It takes more time, sometimes a lot more time. We now have a Birthday Party for Jesus on Christmas Eve, which is an older tradition, but now we also have a family reading of the Christmas story from Luke 2 on our bed on Christmas morning – a tradition started by the kids themselves. Really. They came into our room and started reading the scriptures before they went downstairs to see their presents. We take all day opening presents. Last year, when Christmas was on a Sunday, rather than interrupt the gift-giving to each other to go to church, the kids decided to have that part of Christmas the next day, making Christmas a two-day event. It was one of the most amazing and magical Christmases imaginable.

It’s possible that this wouldn’t work for your family, and that we just have the sort of people it works well for. But if you could do one thing that would boost the Christmas spirit, the spirit of giving, by five or six times, wouldn’t you do it? That’s why we started. For us, it worked.