Yes, Christmas is Too Consumeristic. But What to Do about It?

Happy almost-Thanksgiving, everyone!  I suspect this will be it for posts this week, as I can't imagine many of you will be eagerly reading this blog from Thursday on...and it's possible I won't want to break away from the yams to post.

I'd love your thoughts on Christmas consumerism.

Christmas creep is a famous and detested thing, yet in these times of slow consumer spending, it's ever-more with us.  Two of Boston's oldies stations started playing only Christmas music TEN DAYS AGO.  I wasn't ready for Johnny Mathis and "It's Beginning to Look a Lot Like Christmas" just yet.

Disney's mega-budgeted A Christmas Carol opened a few weeks back to middling business.  My family is the absolute perfect target for that movie--with five kids, we pretty much see every new kids movie eventually.  But my kids had zero interest in this because they weren't thinking about Christmas only a few days after Halloween. 

I'll soon be writing a sermon about the holidays and stress and money, so I'd love any and all thoughts about the subject.

You might have heard about a popular approach to this dilemma of a year or so ago called The Advent Conspiracy. (I've embedded their very cool video--you should check it out if you haven't seen it.) The church I mentioned learning from last week is very into this, leading me to buy the short book they put out.  The pitch here is to limit gift-giving as dramatically as possible and give the money instead towards providing drinkable water around the world for those who need it.  Clearly this is hard to argue with.  (And did I mention the video is cool?  It's cool.)

And yet I found myself not quite buying it as a one-size-fits-all.  I mentioned it to Grace and she pushed back.  Is it all bad that one time a year we get a prompt to give a small gift to family members and a small circle of friends?  Are cards to people we love but who are out of our area such a bad idea?  In a relational universe--a very big idea behind our stage 4 talk--perhaps it's not clear that a modest approach to Christmas is all bad.  Perhaps--as Grace suggested--for all it's worthiness, the Advent Conspiracy is stage 3--a protest against blind consumerism without being, to use that stage 4 word, all that mystical, all that interactively connected to God as we look for our calling at a season like this.

It's not that its corrective is in any way bad--most of us are not all that mystical as we go the other direction and are blindly stressed-out and consumeristic.  And perhaps we should give towards clean water whatever we do at Christmas.  But perhaps the solution to Christmas creep and consumerism and stress lies in connection to Jesus and doing our best to walk through it all with rather than apart from him.

But what are your thoughts?  How do you approach the holidays non-consumeristically and stress-free? 

Comments

[Luke]

My wife and I have this conversation annually. One of the other points I sometimes fall back on is that, as far as I understand it, gift-giving is considered a pretty valid "love language" for some people. I think its a big one for me. If someone spends one dollar and tells me they were thinking of me, I actually get a lot out of that. Maybe that just means I'm emotionally 6 years old, but I like it anyway.

If we can assume some common healthy practices (don't go into debt, don't let the pressure to get the "perfect" gift make you miserable, don't fight little old ladies over the last super-deluxe Twilight: Vampire Elmo Doll, etc) then I feel like I can enjoy the rest of the holiday ride. I love Christmas music if I get the choose the songs, I love the tree, the lighs, and giving presents to my kids. I also love the internet, where I can shop without finding a parking spot.

Ho Ho Ho

[Vinceation]

I like the "living in the real world" component of what you're saying, Dave. The Stage 3 trap is to live in a fantasy world where every thing you do is really a statement in some way either for or against (usually against) some idea or establishment. That sort of world isn't very relational, it's more about feeling good about one's self.
I love it: connection to Jesus really is the bottom-line to every life-dilemma.

[Vinceation]

...and, besides, Jesus cares a heck of a lot about clean water. I'm pretty sure he has in mind to prompt people who are taking a mystical approach to their Christmas season in that direction.

[Crispin Schroeder]

Last year our church did the Advent Conspiracy series after we came across the really cool video. For us I think it worked out pretty good all around. I see how one could easily get very stage 3 with something like this and make it all about not doing certain things and feeling good about yourself but what I found was that the series was pretty effective in helping people to connect with the things that really matter. Basically on the series you just get the 4 weekend titles and the cool video and the actual content is totally up to you. The titles are: Worship Fully, Spend Less, Give More, and Love All. It seems to me that none of these titles force the series into Stage 3 or 2 or 4 but rather that has more to do with the way it's presented and who's presenting it.

For our team we tried to really focus in on what matters - giving presence (as they say in the video) whether to God, or to our family members. It was also cool on the missional front because we had just started a partnership with several other Vineyard churches to help an area out in Zambia. We were able to raise $95,000 over the course of the series and then send a team over four months later to actually start helping with a bio sand filter plant. So in all of this there was a whole lot of emphasis on connection to God, to people, to mission etc. and though the consumerism thing was mentioned it was more mentioned in kind of a baby step way - forgo giving one $20 gift this year and give that to help with clean water. I also found that it really connected with folks who were not yet Christ-followers in a different way than many of our past Christmas series have.

The consumerism issue is not too unlike the church dealing with environmental issues and I agree that it is very challenging to deal with these things from more of a stage 4 perspective than stage 3... challenging but not impossible.

[Dave Schmelzer]

That's very cool to hear, Crispin. I see our 2010 Advent series unspooling before me...

[BMH]

Funny I should read this at the same time I am also surfing Black Friday ads and considering getting up at 5am to get a good deal on a new TV to replace our 11-year old CRT. I have never participated in Black Friday madness. I usually make it a point to buy nothing on that day, actually. And now that I am considering doing it, I have been asking myself if the $150 I may save on the TV might be costing me something more dear on a spiritual level. But now I'm wondering if maybe that is just Stage 3 guilt talking - after all, I'm really just trying to spend less on a TV my wife has been politely asking me to buy for two years now. Or maybe I just don't know what I'm getting into. Hmmm...I think I'll go through with it as a social experiment. Can I come through an early-morning Black Friday experience and still have my soul intact? We shall see...

[Paul M.]

From experience raising three kids and now dealing with life where Walmart can say with a straight face that they need to stay open all Thanksgiving thru the end of Black Friday as their respons to concerns for "safety of their customers", I'd offer the following, and whether it's Stage 3 thinking or not doesn't make it anything but worthy:

bring kids up expecting no more than three gifts from parents, in recognition that Jesus received three gifts,
that they can give something to a family in need, as in " adopt a family"... sort of "pay if forward",
that they take part in a family choice each year of a worthy charity to give to;

and for the rest of us, find a showing of either "What Would Jesus Buy?", with revbilly.net and the Stop Shopping Gospel Choir" or some other film and then, buy nothing on Black Friday!!!
or, if you must do early shopping, take advantage of a Fair trade sale sometime before T-day and on Black friday, buy only locally made goods!!!

[John Kycek]

My take on things such as the Advent Conspiracy are akin to my views on something like... Valentines Day.

I shake my head as men, who for 364 days of the year pay no special attention to their wife, all of a sudden and with great gusto, eek out a gift and maybe a nice dinner on this one day. What is keeping these men from observing this outward and extra-ordinary show of their love year around?

Should this nuanced cynicism keep people from taking part in something like the Advent Conspiracy? Absolutely not! But it does seem a little short sighted to focus on giving up gifts for one day of the year and replacing it with giving to a worthy cause, when if they were to give up that Caramel Machiato Breve (sorry, wife) once a week, they would certainly make a much larger impact.

I also point out, that this does not really apply to a corporate setting, but more to the individual who is considering such things.

[Ben Catlin]

What happened to boycotting Black Friday Brent?

Weren't you the one talking me into not doing my shopping on Black Friday last year? Something about having a prayer service at church to pray against consumer greed or something.

http://harambee78.livejournal.com/151210.html

I feel so let down, here I was actually going to boycott it and not pick up all 4 seasons of Weeds at Best Buy for $10/season. :P

[KimberlyH]

Last year I started learning how to crochet. I made three dishcloths - probably $0.75 in yarn, and 2 hours of work - and gave them to my grandmother for Christmas. She LOVED them and probably more so than any other gift I had given her in years.

This year I'm crocheting something (I can't say exactly what it is because it's a gift and therefore still a secret) for my mom, which will be many, many hours of work, but I'm so excited to give it to her! I think she will really like what I'm making, but also, the gift will be especially meaningful - definitely for me giving it and probably for her receiving it - because of the time and care I'm putting into it. Even if she hates it, I'm making a statement that I love her enough to pour my energy and time into something for her.

Now, if I could just figure out what to crochet for my brother, who lives in Florida, that would take the cake! Since I can't think of anything, I'll probably just pick something up at BestBuy for him.

[John Kycek]

Good for you Kimberly. My wife did the same last year by making scarves for a few of our family members (we're in MN). Money wise, I'm not sure how inexpensive they where after multiple trips to the specialty yarn shop... but I guess we're half-way there!

[Jeff]

I've never shopped on Black Friday but the boycott thing kind of makes the contrarian in me want to go look for deals...

[Trish Ryan]

I come from a long line of varsity-level bargain shoppers (my Dad has a Senior Citizen Discount Card for Goodwill) so you'd think Black Friday would be huge for us. But it's not.

I think this is due to my Mom's emphasis on Christmas as something you take MONTHS to prepare for. Her Christmas "possibility" list ran year round. She had plenty of time to shop bargains, consider that year's budget (my Dad was a teacher and then a lobsterman, so it varied) and what would mean the most to each of us. She got an unbelievable amount of joy from this, and it was contagious. In the background of all my Christmas memories is my mother just glowing from the excitement of blessing and loving her family, and our attempts to surprise her with gifts she'd love just as much.

I'm not the planner my mom is (yet!)...but this is the sort of Christmas experience I'm shooting for.

[BMH]

I think that's a different harambee78 :) Good post, though.

I got the TV. I also don't think I completely lost my soul :) In fact, it was interesting. I was about 25th in line at Sears, just in front of a young family, kids ages 8 and 12 included, who seemed to be really having a great time just hanging out with each other at 3:30am. In front of me was an old woman who was somewhat less joyful. She wanted a TV too. I told her I'd help her find where they were.

Now, this was in a small town, so there were maybe only 100 people there at opening and it was all pretty peaceful and pleasant. I suspect it would have been a different experience in Orlando or Minneapolis.

Still, I do kind of regret doing it. Just by being there, I was giving something up, allowing something as precious as my sleep to be disrupted by the chance to save $100 (and, perhaps partially as a result, I got sick the next day). Also, I realized why stores do this - at 4am you are tired and not in your best judgment and here they are throwing all sorts of great deals at you. I felt a huge temptation to throw lots of stuff in my cart that I hadn't come for. I resisted (mostly), but had a sickening feeling when I realized how I was being physically and mentally manipulated.

I also thought of what might be a cool servant evangelism idea - what if a group of Christians were some of the first to get in line and spent the wait time serving hot chocolate and cookies to people? And what if (and this is key) five minutes before the doors open, they left the line, got in a van and drove away without going into the store? Might be interesting....

But harambee78's idea is also a good one.

[Anna]

I took the "Give Presence" exhortation of the Advent Conspiracy and found really fun "date night" options for the two couples in my family. It was a lot of fun to do, low stress, and not so much "stuff" orientated.