Living in the material world

Facing a second Christmas without employment, I suspect we aren't the only parents wondering how we are going to cobble together a Christmas for our children. Last year's pictures of abundance around the tree serve as a mocking reminder of what we WON'T be able to pull off this year. Christmas without presents is like a potato without butter, filling, yet disappointingly dry, but what is a parent to do?

The Neo-Platonists of the world eschew the material and would, no doubt, guffaw at my worries. For them, anything physical is evil and the absence of gifts offers proof that a new level of consciousness has been attained. But I am a proponent of free trade and believe I should do my part to keep the economy spinning, however slowly, on its axis. In the real world this means spending a paycheck or two at the local Target, securing Easy Bakes, Bionicles, and other forms of happiness for the kids. Right?

But I look around the house and see piles of dolls, more books than can be read in a lifetime, a chest full of dress-ups, closets full of clothes, and a garage into which no cars can fit. I wonder, how much more do we need? I love gifts as much as the next toddler, but, when asked, I am hard pressed to come up with something my children (or I) actually need.

Polar explorer Richard Byrd spent the Antarctic winter of 1934 alone in a prefabricated shack dug deep into the ice. As time without people, good food, and the luxury of broken silence bore down on him, he said, "There were moments when I felt more alive than at any other time in my life. Freed from materialistic distractions, my senses sharpened in new directions, and the random or commonplace affairs of the sky and the earth and the spirit, which ordinarily I would have ignored if I had noticed them at all, became exciting and portentous."

Stripped of material distraction, what such "commonplace affairs" is he talking about? Kind words? Unaccompanied Bach? Game night? Extended grace? Forgiveness for the 10th or 20th time? Being pushed on a swing? Bonfires? Lullabies?

But what if we take it further? Henry Clay Trumbull, in his book Hints on Child Training, says this:

"He who would make children happy must do for them and do with them, rather than merely give to them. He must give himself with his gifts, and thus imitate and illustrate, in a degree, the love of Him who gave Himself to us, who is touched with the sense of our enjoyments as well as our needs, and who, with all that He gives us, holds out an expectation of some better thing in store for us: of that which passeth knowledge and understanding, but which shall fully satisfy our hopes and longings when at last we have it in possession."

Maybe this Christmas won't be remembered for the bulk under the tree. Maybe (and most certainly) I won't get those Ugg boots I've been drooling over. Maybe instead this will be the year we will, despite the mindless rhetoric we annually regurgitate, actually mean it when we say that Jesus is the reason for the season. And maybe---just maybe---stripped of the usual Christmas trappings, He, the Christ child, Wonderful, Counselor, the Mighty God, the Everlasting Father, Emmanuel (which means God with us---with us!) will satisfy our highest hopes and our deepest longings, both now and when the Christmas of 2009 is just a distant memory.