Local News
The Best Christmas Gift We Can Give To God
Published: December 4, 2003
I am carrying a mountain of towels to the linen closet, which is crammed with sheets, blankets, and, yes, more towels. Every time I do laundry, I am stunned and somewhat chagrined at how much stuff we have.
As a child, when we had company over, we wanted to be sure we had “more than enough” food to please everyone because my mom had a deep-seated fear of running out of goodies. When it comes to guests, I can understand the desire to have more than enough, since you can’t predict how much Uncle Mike may eat.
But when it comes to clothing, technology, jewelry, toys, and, yes, towels, we must make a concerted effort to figure out when we have reached the golden state called “enough.”
The luxury train can take us to a dangerous destination. The more I see myself as someone who deserves the very best, the more my self-image changes. Suddenly I become someone who cannot be denied any comfort. The seats in my car have to be heated and the food I eat must be the best. After all, this is ME, and I am the most important person in the world, aren’t I?
In the wonderful novel “Jane Eyre,” the main character lived in an orphanage, where a piece of bread and a little coffee was lunch. On cold days, the children shivered in their thin dresses, and some mornings they had no breakfast at all.
As for me, I have never gone to bed hungry, unless I was dieting, and I can’t recall a time when my mom said there was not enough food. Yet for millions of children, this message from mom is commonplace.
And now Christmas is upon us, the season of excess. Giving gifts is wonderful because at least it makes us think of others and stop catering just to ourselves. But giving expensive gifts to people who already have everything can be just as wasteful as pampering ourselves.
For the past 10 years, I have tracked all my expenditures and learned to live on a relatively fixed income. That income buys me excellent medical care, yummy food, a comfortable house, transportation and nice clothes. However, last month I fell off the wagon and spent more than I should have.
Where the heck did it go? I shelled out $60 on books without even leaving my desk (thanks to online shopping) and another pile of bucks on lunches, and more on clothes. Only $30 went to the poor last month, because I assured myself that was all that I could afford. And then came that little voice, asking, “Oh, really?”
It doesn’t take a math wizard to see that the more money I waste, the less I will have to give to my needy neighbors.
One of the most emotional passages in the New Testament comes when Jesus tells his friends that he was hungry and they failed to feed him and naked and they failed to clothe him. The friends are distraught. They ask him when they did such things. They love this man dearly. Why would they harm him?
And then he unveils the shocking explanation. He tells his friends that whatever they do to the least of God’s creatures, they do to God. This means we get a chance to show our love for God by caring for the hungry, the naked, the sick and the dying. What a hard lesson to learn in a society that worships the well-dressed, the well-fed and the healthy.
In another telling scene, a rich young man who seems to be doing everything right asks Christ what else he needs to do. Christ tells the man to sell what he has, give his money to the poor and “Come, follow me.” That piece of advice seemed so drastic that the man walked away. It still seems drastic today, so most of us walk away from that invitation, telling ourselves we will follow Christ when we retire, when the kids are out of college, and when we have done all our traveling.
But there are small ways to accept Christ’s invitation. At Christmas especially, we can stop wasting money on elaborate gifts and give the money we save to charities that cater specifically to the poor, like Catholic Relief Services and the St. Vincent de Paul Society.
Please excuse me for sounding preachy. I assure you that I am the worst offender when it comes to greed. I am a child of a society that believes “more is better.” If you have 10 towels, then surely 20 will make life easier. If you have one car, a second one will do the trick. But where does it all end?
I am praying to learn a tough lesson, which is that, while I am indulging my urge to splurge, somewhere in another country – or perhaps across town – a child is dying of malnutrition. Somewhere a child is going barefooted because mom and dad have no money for shoes, and a baby sister is suffering due to lack of medical care.
It is a sad irony that we spend huge amounts of money to celebrate the birth of a baby born in poverty. A baby who grew into a man who devoted his life to ministering to the poor, the hungry, the sick and the outcasts.
At Christmas, it is a challenge to show our love for others in simple ways, but we can do it. And if we don’t go overboard on expensive presents, we can give that baby in the manger a truly great gift. By recognizing that we have more than enough, we can accept his invitation to truly follow him.
Lorraine Murray is a parishioner at St. Thomas More Church in Decatur. She writes a bi-weekly column in the Faith and Values section of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, and is the author of “Why Me? Why Now?” and “Grace Notes.” She can be contacted at
lorrainevmurray@yahoo.com.
