A Christmas Without Presents
I overheard an interesting conversation at work recently. The topic was about Christmas presents. One lady explained that she had all of her Christmas shopping done. Another explained that she had yet to begin.
I chimed in and told them that I had yet to buy many presents because I’m such a procrastinator. Their response was, “Most men are.”
After a brief moment of silence, a third lady joined the conversation and said, “I haven’t bought a Christmas present in years.”
We all stood silent, waiting for the lady to explain.
“My husband and I agreed that we weren’t going to give presents to each other. That was the end of Christmas presents for us.”
One of the ladies challenged her view, “So what do you do for presents then?”
She replied, “I don’t need a holiday to tell me when or when not to buy presents for those dear to me. For me, Christmas is year-round.”
After that comment, the conversation drifted towards the absurdity of retail holidays. However, the lady’s comment about not buying presents made me ponder. What if there was a Christmas without presents? I have never gone a Christmas without presents, but it makes so much sense that Christmas is not about rushing to the store to cross a name off of a list.
I pose a question to the reader: what do you think Christmas would be like if there were no presents involved?
Join the Discussion (3 Comments)
It would be really difficult to stop the tradition of giving gifts because it is so ingrained into our society. I don’t necessarily have a problem with the giving of gifts — just the time spent shopping and the obligation that often accompanies it. I do think it would be interesting to “fast” from giving gifts one year, just to get the focus back on Jesus and spending time with family. Many people wouldn’t understand, but perhaps one could get their immediate family to go along with it for one year.
Posted on January 11th, 2007 at 9:05 pm
I’ve been wondering about a presentless Christmas lately. Most of the stress seems to come from the whole presents thing. Get rid of that and suddenly you’ve got Thanksgiving with church and carols. Instead of supporting the economy with your dollar, you’re supporting the spiritual economy with a celebration of the Son of Man who lived to teach us and died for our sins. Or maybe presents could be given, but to the needy. That would restore Christ to Christmas, we could have the holiday and ditch the stress.
Posted on December 14th, 2007 at 11:02 am
I would like to relate what just happenend this past Christmas. I have moved my family this year from Los Angeles to Brussels, Belgium. Money is supertight and my wife and I discussed not buying presents this year. However, I went ahead and bought gifts because my belief is that you just HAVE to have presents at Christmas time. But instead of making my wife feel surprised and happy, she felt guilty (for not buying me anything) and angry for me buying things she didn’t truly need. I had practically ruined Christmas. In fact, only one gift made her happy and it was a 5 dollar bottle of maple syrup. After my wife and I made up, I realized if I had just given her the bottle of maple syrup (which is not a commonly available item in Belgium), everything WOULD have been perfect. So next year, it’s a Christmas presentless Christmas. Thanks for your thoughts!
Posted on December 27th, 2007 at 9:40 am