Will it be enough?
—
I remember the first Christmas I celebrated with my family when I was separated from ex-husband in 2003. He and I had been living in Missouri for just over a year at the time, but when we separated in October, I moved back to California to be near my family.
Within a month, I got a job on the management team of my local Barnes & Noble, surrounded by books and music every day and making a full-time wage while staying at my dad’s home without many expenses.
When it came time for Christmas, I was in heaven. I had plenty of income to spare and a family I loved to spend it on.
I remember some of the gifts. A Law & Order coffee table book for my dad, a retired police corporal. A quality version of the Lord of the Rings trilogy for my older brother. Nice hardcover copies of some great young adult fiction for my mom, a schoolteacher.
I felt so free that year when it came to Christmas spending. So much joy in the finding and the giving. Giving each person multiple gifts just because I could and I wanted to.
But not every year is that way.
Some years the budget is tight — tight every month of the year already, and how in the world will we manage Christmas on top of it? Some years we have no idea what to gift the people in our lives. Some years relationships are strained, and then what do we do?
It gets me thinking on how the true self and false self can rise up and be at odds in the Christmas season, perhaps without our even realizing it — how the pressure to spend enough or as much as someone else did or to gift perfectly can steer us into murky, confusing waters. I think about gift-giving in the context of these pressures and the heart palpitations start right up. Will my gifts be enough? If I give them a gift but they don’t give me one, will it make them uncomfortable? What if I forget a gift for someone who remembers me? What if I really can’t afford to keep up with the seeming demands of Christmas spending right now?
Maybe you know what I’m talking about. I’m willing to bet you do.
I suspect, at their root, these questions get at the issue of worthiness. Can who I am really be enough in the context of relationship? Can my worth be measured by something other than what I spend or find to give? Better yet, can my worth not be something others measure in their minds at all?
Perhaps in these questions comes an invitation. Perhaps they contain an opportunity to step outside the pressures of this season and stake a radical claim for worthiness — our own and that of others — that’s not measured, judged, or compared at all.
Perhaps in this season, we can choose what’s truly best for us to do in the gifting and give others permission to do the same. What might that be like instead?
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Christianne,
This used to be a HUGE BATTLE for me and every year it gets better. The family matter has gotten better as a whole….but what gets me lately is the whole idea of consumerism. I don’t see how we can hold anyone to the 10th commandment (Thou shall not covet they neighbors goods), when every one of us breaks that law in some fashion by supporting an unjust system of unfair market trade and greed. I put myself there as well. Oh how this troubles me!
Christianne, we didn’t even send or write any Christmas cards this year. I’m so utterly exhausted even before Christmas Eve services that I don’t feel guilty. It says something alarming I suppose that I don’t even feel guilty since cards are generally rather banal and harmless. Perhaps it’s a statement ultimately of my “Christmas fatigue.” I have become so discouraged by the faux glitter we put around our consumerism, complete with fancy creche arrangements for the Nativity scenes that I’m rather numb to the whole thing. We’ve bought one, count ’em, one gift for each other this year. And, frankly, it feels pretty good. Freeing actually.