How Then Should We Celebrate?

Pastor John Wright:

Yes, we are completely and unabashedly and unashamedly bourgeois in this exchange of gifts. As I age, I understand the depth of this practice as a celebration of Christ's nativity, as well as it's dangers. I am very thankful for the time to be together as a family, and share in a material exchange of gifts in honor of our Lord. Amidst a society that would fragment and individuate us even as a family into different market groups, the economics of gifts come to us appropriately in honor of our Lord. I am particularly thankful about this year, as the time will be wedged between the times when we gather as a congregation in observance of the Nativity of the Word of God.

Yet, of course, this gift exchange has become the basis for the consumer culture in which we live. As Eric over at ericisrad.com quoted to me, persons like Bill O'Reilly invert the whole structure of gift giving at the Nativity by saying something to the effect that all business owners should thank Jesus for being born. In other words, God did them a favor for providing the spur to increased consumer spending that pays off in higher dividends for the owners.

How do we then celebrate? ....

If gift exchange becomes part of the malformation of our desires for aquisitiveness outside what is Good, True, and Beautiful, it will ultimately rip a family apart. Christmas familial gift exchanges that tie families together because of the momentary fulfillment of unchecked material desires set the stage ultimately for sibling dissolution over arguments of the distribution of goods following the parents' demise.

Relationships do not exist for the distribution of goods; goods exist for the good of human relationships. May all of our practices increase the desire for God and God's kingdom, celebrated in the gather of the congregation and even in the exchange of gifts in the context of a family on this coming feast of the Nativity.

[via la nouvelle theologie]