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Five ways to calm down Christmas

Our Faith

By Dan Grippo

This article appeared in the December 1979 issue of U.S. Catholic (Vol. 44, No. 12, pages 23-24).

Christmas. I’m sick of fighting my way into jammed parking lots, being subjected to syrupy renditions of “Silent Night” while riding department store escalators and waiting in cashier lines until my feet ache.

I’m tired of hearing the shopping days counted down as if NASA were planning to send a huge Christmas tree into orbit on December 25th… “four, three, two, one—there it goes, ten tons of pine needles and bark, heading for heaven!”

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There’s got to be a better way to celebrate Christmas. We take the season too seriously, in all the wrong ways. We are grim in our determination to find the perfect presents, send the most striking cards, bake the tastiest cookies, have the time of our life. It’s just impossible, and the effort often leaves us depressed on December 26th; the day never lives up to expectations.

Why do we race around the week before Christmas buying expensive gifts as if it were a rite of preparation for the coming of the Lord? Jesus did not say we would recognize him in the breaking of the bank. And in fact it becomes very difficult to recognize him when we spend most of the season fighting crowds and fatigue.

Mostly we get trapped. It’s not that we intend to be swept up by the needless overconsumption of the season. It’s that we haven’t stopped to think about the season ahead of time and make sense of it. We haven’t stopped to choose what kind of Christmas we would like to have.

We’ve been trapped into thinking we have to act in a certain way during the season. Advertisers pull out the heavy artillery at Christmas, bombarding us with messages that say, “The only way to celebrate is to buy these shiny, expensive gifts.”

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But Christmas is for sharing. We’re remembering, reliving, celebrating the moment in history when our God shared himself by entering humanity and living with us, as us.

Often that sense of sharing is lost in the helter-skelter rush to prepare for Christmas. We are pressed for time; it is all we can do to get through our foot-long gift lists. We don’t have time for people; we’re not able to pay much attention to their needs at a time when those needs might be most critical.

Maybe that’s why so many people experience a profound sense of loneliness at Christmas. It’s a kind of cruel reversal of the point of Christmas in the first place. The least it could do is cheer us out of our winter doldrums. Instead it seems to intensify them.

Is there a way off the mad Christmas merry-go-round? It’s difficult, maybe impossible, to make a change alone. The cycle of rushing and spending, spending and rushing, is imbedded in our culture. Going against the grain alone is a very unpopular thing to do. Friends might be hurt at not receiving the kind of gifts they are used to receiving; family members might resent your refusal to “pull your fair share” in the gigantic Christmas effort. You might come off as a stingy, lazy humbug.

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The only hope of regaining Christmas is to do so in community. It can start with the family, the core of the Christmas celebration, sitting down and talking about what has gone wrong with the season. Common themes begin to emerge: too many gifts, too much money spent, too much time and energy for all the wrong things, too much work and not enough Jesus.

Then the question, what could Christmas be like? More time spent with people, sharing memories of the past year, making plans for the coming one. Doing things together, being more prayerful and more playful, telling stories, talking about God. Reaching beyond ourselves.

One common theme emerge, a plan of action takes shape. One family might make their presents this year. Or give each other things they already own, trade things that are important parts of their lives. This will help them get to know each other better and experience each other as family, helping each other grow by giving to each other.

Or maybe this year the family will make a little retreat to a quiet spot in the woods. They could take the time to relax and regain a sense of family, to get to know each other again, and then return in time to share their strength and peace on Christmas day.

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A group of friends might make a special effort this Christmas to reach out to those less fortunate than them. Perhaps a trip to a local nursing home. They’ll put together a Christmas show, using the wealth of talent and creativity they have been blessed with to bring joy into the lives of those without families.

Another family might donate money they would normally spend on each other to a worthwhile charity, one that is helping feed the hungry, clothe the naked, shelter the homeless.

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Or they might prepare a huge Christmas banquet and open their doors to those in the community who would otherwise spend Christmas alone.

The possibilities are endless, and each family can find their own way of expressing Christmas in a loving, human way that signals to the world that this is a time for moving outside ourselves, and our family units, to share with the larger human family.

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At the same time families would be moving away from the rush and crush of the season and might begin to sense a peaceful purpose to Christmas and enjoy themselves more.

A new vision of Christmas can start with the family but it doesn’t have to end there. Those who wish to can move out from their families into the larger communities of neighborhoods and parish, block and city, school and workplace.

People can invite friends and neighbors to join in a group effort. There is a strength in numbers, and the vision of what Christmas should be will become more focused as it is shared with others.

A further possibility could be placing an ad in the parish bulletin, local newspaper, supermarket bulletin board, or even on corner street-light posts. (Professional advertising agencies aren’t the only ones who can spread the message of Christmas!)

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The ad would invite others to join in making Christmas a more human, generous, and outgoing celebration. Scheduling a Sunday afternoon open house would be one way of getting things rolling.

Then Christmas would be a time for getting to know people we would otherwise never come into contact with. And that contact would not be the pushing and shoving we now experience at Christmas. It would be human interaction that would help ease the tensions that keep us a divided people.

Tensions like fighting for parking spaces on jammed lots, jostling for position in unbearably slow cashier lines, and having to put up with those god-awful renditions of “Silent Night.”

Image: Flickr photo cc by Mosman Library