In the sixth month the angel Gabriel was sent by God to a town in Galilee called Nazareth, to a virgin engaged to a man whose name was Joseph, of the house of David. The virgin’s name was Mary. And he came to her and said, “Greetings, favored one! The Lord is with you.” But she was much perplexed by his words and pondered what sort of greeting this might be. The angel said to her, “Do not be afraid, Mary, for you have found favor with God. And now, you will conceive in your womb and bear a son, and you will name him Jesus. He will be great, and will be called the Son of the Most High, and the Lord God will give to him the throne of his ancestor David. He will reign over the house of Jacob forever, and of his kingdom there will be no end.” Mary said to the angel, “How can this be, since I am a virgin?” The angel said to her, “The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you; therefore the child to be born will be holy; he will be called Son of God. And now, your relative Elizabeth in her old age has also conceived a son; and this is the sixth month for her who was said to be barren. For nothing will be impossible with God.” Then Mary said, “Here am I, the servant of the Lord; let it be with me according to your word.” Then the angel departed from her.
(Luke 1:26-38)
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We spend a lot of time as Christmas approaches wondering what nto buy for the people in our lives. There’s a story told of a woman who gave her husband a burial plot for Christmas. Suffice to say, he wasn’t very impressed. The next year, she didn’t give him anything. He was actually hurt. He said to her, “why didn’t you give me anything for Christmas this year?” She looked at him and said “Why should I? You didn’t use what I gave you last year!”
I did some research a few days ago on shopping habits in Canada at this time of year. I couldn’t find specifics from 2017, but I did come across some fascinating numbers from December of 2016. I’m not sure how things are going to go this year, of course, but based on what I’ve already seen in various stores and shopping malls over the last little while I’d say this is probably going to be pretty accurate. Not all of these amounts are directly due to Christmas, of course – because these items get purchased all year round – but spending in December according to every source I consulted is always substantially higher than in any other month. From Statistics Canada, here’s how much Canadians spent based on products bought at large suppliers in December 2016:
On food and drinks, Canadians spent – $5.1 billion
On TVs, audio and video equipment, Canadians spent – $459.9 million
On toys, games and hobby supplies, including electronic games, Canadians spent – $417.8 million
On computer hardware and software, Canadians spent – $274.9 million
On small electrical appliances, Canadians spent – $263.4 million
On tableware, kitchenware, cookware and bakeware, Canadians spent – $238.5 million
On cosmetics and fragrances, Canadians spent – $154.8 million
On sporting goods, Canadians spent – $171.6 million
On jewellery and watches, Canadians spent – $118.0 million
On stationery, office supplies, cards, gift wrap and party supplies, Canadians spent – $98.7 million
On cameras and related photographic equipment and supplies, Canadians spent – $73.7 million
That’s a lot of shopping! Happy holidays and merry Christmas, indeed! It certainly is for large suppliers!
Shopping – and the gifts we get – tend to be the focus at this time of year. And we instill that idea in our children’s minds from a very young age as we introduce them to Santa and they give him their list of what they want for Christmas. Please understand that I’m not saying that we shouldn’t be giving gifts to others. I suppose that the tradition of giving gifts for Christmas flows from the story in Matthew’s Gospel of the wise men bringing gifts to the child they found in Bethlehem. There’s nothing wrong with showing our love and friendship with giving gifts, but sometimes it does get out of hand, and the focus of the season becomes the gifts themselves, rather than the people. Let’s be honest. Have you ever had someone give you a gift and rather than being thankful for it you’ve been disappointed with it? You’ve thought they should have got you something else? You thought they should have known you well enough that they’d have known that the collection of dish towels wasn’t exactly what you wanted to find under your tree? So, in other words, the gift rather than the giver was what mattered. I may not be a Mormon, but I think Brigham Young gave some pretty good advice: “Love the giver more than the gift.”
Having said that, let’s also be honest. Most of us like to get gifts, don’t we? And so most of us feel that in order to make those we care about happy at Christmas, we have to buy gifts – sometimes lots of them! So Christmas turns into a gigantic shopping spree, except that unlike the shopping sprees you win, you have to pay for all the things you buy. We buy for our co-workers, we buy for our friends, we buy for our spouses and our children and our parents. And rather than the joy of the Christmas season, after doing that what happens is that many people end up with the post-Christmas hangover when the credit card bills come in to pay for it all. I read in the course of my research that one third of people will take over seven months to pay off their Christmas debts. So in other words, you’re pretty much at the point when stores will be trying to entice you to start your Christmas shopping (because I see Christmas displays appearing in some stores in August) before you’ve even managed to pay for everything you bought the year before. And this never ending cycle of shopping and buying and paying and debt goes on and on and on – and the stores rejoice, and the banks who charge you interest rejoice. But we usually don’t rejoice when the January credit card bill arrives. So maybe – just maybe – we have our focus all wrong at this time of year.
I’m thinking of today’s Gospel reading. Mary received a wonderful gift – and I’m not even talking about the baby Jesus. The gift Mary received was the knowledge that she was loved and favoured by God; that she was chosen by God for a special purpose. She learned that her value wasn’t to be measured by what kind of gifts she received from others, but from the gift she received from God – to be accepted and chosen and used in God’s plan. That’s something you can’t buy in a store. Usually, when we think of the Christmas story, we think of Mary giving birth, but really in many ways the key to the whole story was what happened before she was even pregnant – and what mattered was really these words; “Do not be afraid, Mary, for you have found favor with God.” The gift that God gave Mary was not the baby Jesus; the gift God gave Mary was the knowledge that she was loved, accepted and even favoured by God. Those were not expensive gifts; this was simply Mary coming to realize the very nature of God – a God who gives for the sake of his children. The greatest gift Mary received was the gift of being assured of God’s presence. If we think back for moment to Matthew’s Gospel - what do you think pleased God the most in that story? Was it the gifts the wise men brought to Jesus, or was it the fact that they simply came to him that counted the most? I am not saying there is anything wrong with buying gifts for others at Christmas. I think the desire to give gifts shows a very Christian heart. But, I think that as we do buy things for others, we should try to remember that the most important gift of all that we can give is ourselves.
I want to go back for just a moment to those words from Brigham Young: “Love the giver more than the gift.” We can give those around us many things this Christmas, but none of them even come close to the love we give them by merely being around them and sharing time with them. Your presence is the best possible gift you could ever get for someone whom you love and treasure, and their presence is the best possible gift they could give to you. In the orgy of commercialism and shopping that marks the Christmas season, we need to learn to value the people around us more than we value the material things that we buy and put under the tree.
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