A Gift Exchange

It has become commonplace this time of year to bemoan the "commercialization" of Christmas. This will not be one of those times.

Frankly, it seems that the growth of commercialization (by this I mean the frenetic gift-buying) is nothing more than the effect of a growing loss of our ability to express true love for our families and neighbors. It is the materialist's answer to a spiritual problem. We want to say "I love you" in an easy way, but there is no easy way.

If an exchange of gifts is a means by which we say "I was thinking about you" or "I love you", then I say we need more "commercialization". But the people who decry the gift-buying frenzies of Christmas are not complaining that there is too much love being exchanged, but that there is no love in our gift exchanges. Now that is a different matter altogether.

Unfortunately, the answer usually proferred for the over-commercialization of Christmas is a syrupy sentimentality that is equally vacuous. Somehow baking cookies (weren't those bought too?) and making a home-made card is more "loving" than buying them at Wal-mart. I agree that putting more thought and effort into our gifts is a good thing, but does that necessarily translate into more love being conveyed or that a truer gift is being given?

Now, at this juncture, you might be tempted to call me Scrooge and shout bah humbug at me! But again, I am all for the INCREASE of love as evidenced by the exchanges of gifts. I just contend that neither side of the commercialism debate is really hitting the mark.

The true malady, as I see it, is that none of us are really capable of fully expressing the depth of our love, gratitude and appreciation to those we most want to know it. It is as if we are prisoners of our own thoughts and bodies.

Indeed we are. We all struggle with our own finiteness. We have limited time, limited abilities, limited wealth and other human frailties. And yet, we sense something of the Infinite whenever we experience love. Somehow when we share love, rather than it being divided, it multiplies. Wow!

Sometimes, selfishly, in our quest for that thing that never exhausts itself, we seek the feeling rather than the Cause of that feeling. That is why gift-giving, commercialization or sentimentality finally exhausts itself and rings hollow. It stops becoming about others and, consciously or not, becomes about us.

Christmas is an annual reminder and corrective to us. Christmas is when the Infinite intersected with the finite. Christmas is when Love was Incarnated, took on our flesh (and limitations) and showed us the way to true Love. Christmas is a message of hope and humility. Christmas reminds us that a Savior is born to those who could not save themselves. Christmas is the beginning of the greatest gift exchange of all time:

"Greater love than this no man hath, that he lay down his life for his friends." John 15:13.