We are a nation of doers. This is especially apparent during the holiday season. People everywhere are making preparations for Christmas. Buying presents. Decorating houses. Preparing feasts. Going to parties. Traveling to relatives. Doing, doing, doing.
Of course, this is all for a good reason. Christmas is all about the greatest Gift ever given. It is about the birth of Jesus. Christmas celebrates the day when the Creator of all things was born into His own creation as a creature. Christmas is about God giving Himself to us as a Gift. And it is in commemoration of this Gift that we observe the tradition of giving gifts to one another. Christmas is about Bethlehem (Hebrew for “house-of-bread“). When He was born, Jesus was placed in a manger—a feeding trough. And so we follow the tradition of setting out great feasts in commemoration of Jesus who is the Bread of Life.
But these beautiful traditions carry with them a danger. In our zeal to commemorate God’s giving, we always tend to focus more on our giving than on God’s Gift. We work so hard at preparing feasts that we have little time to be fed by the Bread of Life. And so, God’s greatest Gift lies unopened and un-enjoyed while we buzz around giving gifts to others.
This gives rise to another holiday tradition: to grouse about the commercialization of Christmas. It is tempting to complain about “those people” who are trading off of Jesus’ birthday. But I choose not to participate in this chorus. Because the problem lies not in merchants, chain stores, toy manufacturers or secular culture. The problem lies within us. And I don’t just mean that we are the ones buying all these things!
What I mean is that we regularly and habitually rush past all of the gifts that God gives and hasten to get to our response. We are so busy with doing all the right things that we fail actually to appreciate the Gift. It may well be your intent to thank God with all this activity. But as a giver of gifts, you know that the greatest gratitude that people can show you is simply to enjoy and use what you give. God is no different. He gives Jesus to you not to set an example of giving. God gives you Himself that you might handle and enjoy (1 John 1:1).
I submit to you that we don’t need practice in giving gifts. What we need is practice in receiving them. How many times have you been given a gift which caused angst rather than joy because you didn’t have a gift to give in return? And so the reception of an unreciprocated gift becomes an embarrassment and a source of the holiday blues when it should be pure joy and the epitome of the holiday spirit!
As a remedy for this topsy-turvy condition, I offer two simple prescriptions: First, discipline yourself to receive at least one gift this year with nothing but heartfelt appreciation. Suppress that habitual need to give a gift of equal or greater value in return. By this, the gifts of Christmas can again serve their original purpose—to remind you of what you have received from God in the birth of His only-begotten Son (John 3:16). Second, reminded of the Gift of God, take a break from all your doing in order to sit quietly in Christ’s Church to hear the Word made flesh and thereby to receive the Bread of Life. This way you will actually be receiving the Gift that God gave you on the silent and holy night. And in receiving Him, you receive the fullness of God’s grace and truth (John 1:1-14).