By Editor Bob Terry
The individual offering the prayer referred to the gifts of Christmas as “all that stuff.” Another person declared, “We spend a lot of time buying stuff, accumulating stuff and trying to make people feel better about themselves by giving them stuff.”
Judging from reports from marketing firms, these observations are certainly on target. One report indicated that Americans will spend $475 billion this year on gifts, decorations and parties related to Christmas. It is estimated that some people won’t be able to pay off their Christmas debt until at least March. And that is in a year when merchants are antsy about total Christmas sales. Imagine what the situation would be if the economy were healthy.
Most of us are among those who will run themselves ragged with the shopping, wrapping and celebrating that are so much a part of the Christmas season. When the Christmas season ends, we will breathe a deep sigh of relief. Maybe then we can rest and life can return to normal, we hope.
Isn’t it ironic that we celebrate the birth of our Lord by giving stuff?
God’s gift to mankind that we celebrate at Christmas was a relationship. It was not stuff. God offers us a relationship with Himself through faith in Jesus.
The angel appeared to Joseph in a dream, revealing that the child about to be born would be called “Immanuel, which means God is with us” (Matt. 1:22–23). God’s gift to His people has always been Himself. It has never been stuff.
When God directed Moses back to Egypt, God’s promise was “I will be with you” (Ex. 3:12). After the Hebrews left slavery, the Tent of Meeting became the place where God promised to meet with His people (Ex. 29:42–43). Daniel 3:25 affirms that God was with the three Hebrew children thrown into the fiery furnace.
Still Israel looked for another evidence of “God with us.” The prophet Isaiah said God would provide a sign of being with His people. The sign would be a virgin giving birth to a son whose name would be Immanuel, which means God with us (Isa. 7:14).
That promise was fulfilled in the birth that occurred in Bethlehem, the birth of Jesus to the Virgin Mary. Matthew says clearly this birth fulfilled the prophet’s announcement made hundreds of years before Jesus was born. Jesus is Immanuel. He is God with us. Even His last words uttered upon this earth declared that truth. Jesus said, “I am with you always, even unto the end of the age” (Matt. 28:20).
If God’s gift to us is relationship, then perhaps that should inform our gifts to one another. Perhaps we need to give more attention to relationships rather than stuff.
Sometimes stuff at Christmas is used like a sin offering of the Old Testament. The gift is supposed to atone for all the wrong of the past year. The lack of attention to relationship is obvious.
Sometimes stuff at Christmas takes the place of relationships. The gift becomes a “tip of the hat” to ensure future contact, but there is no hint of a relationship ever existing.
Some people even use stuff to try and manipulate or control others. Any relationship that follows is for the benefit of the giver, not the one who receives the gift.
Thankfully Christmas gifts can also be used like an exclamation point at the end of a sentence. They are there to relay importance, appreciation, even love. That is when stuff is an expression of a relationship instead of a substitute for a relationship. That is when the stuff doesn’t have to be extravagant to be appreciated. The gift is an exclamation mark of emphasis. The sentence that it follows is all about relationship.
The gifts people treasure most grow out of relationship. The things we treasure through the ages are not the stuff from store shelves but those things that grow out of relationship. Things like the items the children made for us in days gone by.
Most people long for relationship. Recently a family was recalling how busy Thanksgiving was, how the day was spent preparing a wonderful meal for all to enjoy and then the time spent in cleanup.
Various ones lamented that the day was gone before they got to visit with others.
This Christmas, they decided the family meal would be a pot of soup, corn bread and a dessert. No one would go hungry, but the emphasis of the day would be on relationships. People could actually have time to visit and cultivate the most important gift they could give one another, the gift of relationship expressed through caring and sharing about one another.
Simplifying Christmas, breaking the bond between materialism and the Master’s birthday, is one way of emphasizing the gift of relationship. Simplifying Christmas can slow our frantic pace.
It can refocus our attention on others rather than stuff. It can help us offer ourselves to God through faith in Jesus Christ as we give Him our love and devotion during the season of His birth.
After all, Christmas is not about who got the most stuff. It is about celebrating a relationship with Immanuel, God with us.
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