Sometimes It's Better to Receive Than to Give

We didn't do the whole presents thing this Christmas. And yes, I am bragging about how we survived Christmas without embracing the mass consumerism in which you probably indulged (*pursed lips, judgmental eyes*). No, not really. In fact, as much as I appreciate pure family and food, I do miss the childhood anticipation, the feeling that the one thing on my Santa list would set the world right if I found it under the tree, and the valuable lesson of the inevitable anticlimax. My pajamaed sisters and I would wake up at an hour most of us would not care to even know about and sing Christmas carols until my parents woke up. Then, with my dad's camera flashing, we would rush to the tree with only a millisecond to notice the beautiful store-front (or tree-front, to be more accurate) display that my mom had finished only three hours earlier. What followed was always carnage (or a massacre, to borrow my friend Sandra's phrase). No liturgy. No waiting while your little sister struggled with ribbons. Maybe we missed a valuable lesson in patience and delayed gratification, but we didn't miss out on those other things the gifts bring out in us - gratitude, appreciation and a real knowledge that, unlike the Santa myths, we were receivers, recipients of the blessed bounty of our parents' work and grace.

2011 has been a year of receiving. My family and I, offering very little (other than cute pictures of our daughter on Facebook), have been surrounded by givers. Friends helped us with housing in the States, family helped us with house and car in Germany, and this was after they helped us fly to Germany in style. We received babysitting, plenty of free meals and the time and room for both an Alpen vacation and further education. All the givers in our life had been given much, and they only gave inasmuch as they received. Now, I'm writing for free and teaching for pennies, hoping to carve out enough of a subsistence that we can be better givers ourselves. Whenever I get to that point, it will be riding on the backs of so many who gave to us.

We didn't do the present thing, because my family in the States decided to forgo presents and pitch in to fly us to Florida. So we had one big present, a sunshine holiday, family, lots of pictures and plenty of food. It's an appropriate final gift after a year of receiving. After all, Christmas celebrates the Word who was both with God and was God, becoming a gift for us. That's why Christians took the dark pagan solstice holidays anticipating the return of the light and transformed them into our own Christmas feast. We celebrate what the Apostle John calls this "the true light that gives light to everyone" who came into our world. To follow Jesus is a gift available to us all. It is well worth receiving. May you receive much in 2012, so that you may give.