So, I’ve been thinking about Christmas. Christmas and materialism to be exact. I confess, I was a childhood materialist, endlessly perusing the Sears catalog to figure out what I could get with the budget my mom allotted for my seasonal indulgence. A Stereo? Toys? Five medium gifts? One giant gift? Hours and hours of soul searching, head scratching turmoil over the best option with the most desirable outcome. Good Lord, it was hard work being a childhood materialist. But now I’ve begun to ask myself- was that all there was to it?
As all public mentions of ‘Christmas’ seem to be evaporating as the watchdogs of political correctness get their un-merry little way, I find myself forming a different perspective towards my days of materialistic yearning. I find myself asking –was there something more to the Christmas days of old where I could barely get to sleep knowing ‘what I always wanted’ awaited to reveal itself in a few hours time; was there something deeper than a simplistic lust for mere ‘stuff’?
I used to get frustrated at all the talk of ‘the Christmas spirit’ and the ‘season of giving’ and all that crapola as the true meaning of Christmas was scarcely ever revealed to be more than family, food and friends. Nowadays as the very word Christmas is being stricken from the public square I realize that, man, it wasn’t so bad back in the day. Why? Because at least the little grommets like me had SOME idea of what the fuss was all about.
And what I am beginning to now realize was my youthful anxiety and anticipation for all that ‘stuff’ were actually clues and a glimpse at something way beyond me.
It was a god given anticipation that there is something beyond myself that promises possibilities and realities greater than what I have in the present moment. It wasn’t the mere idea I would just ‘have more stuff’, it was the greater idea that when I got the rest of those Kiss records, or the complete six million dollar man setup or the new stereo -new horizons would be opened. Dreams would be realized. Things beyond what I now see, feel and possess would be created and because of that, my place in the world would not seem so…out of place. No, all would seem to ‘fit’. All would seem to make sense.
Now obviously, whatever I found beneath the Christmas trees of my youth in the end did come up short. Big stereos became obsolete (never got one anyway), the seven million dollar man beat the six million dollar man and everything else broke, cracked or got lost. But what remained was this feeling –this deep sensation, that something greater awaits with the arrival of Christmas morn and what is hidden in those and packages could finally be unwrapped and revealed. Something better (stronger, faster…we can rebuild him…) lay just around the corner. And fortunately, for me this vague concept of Christmas provided a clue in my journey towards understanding what real surprise was all about. It was about realizing the giver of gifts was not Santa or my mom. It was something -or someone -else. And realizing that my hope in and for new and greater possibilities of creativity, experience and inspiration were not to be found at the bottom of a tree but someplace else; someplace beyond my living room. This wild idea of shepherds and wisemen being provoked to go wandering around peeking in barns for who-knows-what resonated with my own desire to look forwards and towards something I have yet to see.
I now see my hopeful anticipation as a child was a clue and a beckoning to something greater. Eventually those clues and that beckoning led me to see it all made sense –that I was on journey much like Mary and Joseph. I was to find something great and unexpected as they did. The unexpected king-child that was birthed to them was the same king-child the magi calculated to be appearing. And the magic that burst forth unto the shepherds was the same (or at least similar) mystery and magic that surrounded my heart as I impatiently awaited the arrival of Christmas morn.
Although my young materialistic heart was not pure, what I am sure of is it was also not all bad. It resonated with things surrounding the Christmas story because at the essence of those tales are truths that are eternal- eternal to smelly shepherds in a field, eternal to a 9 yr old kid that only knows all will be complete when he gets ALL of the Kiss records, and eternal to anyone who drinks themselves drunk on Christmas eve because they fear that what they hoped for was a lie and there is no sense to be made of life and there is no place for them in this world.
Perhaps that is why Christmas is getting drained from the public square –is it just to painful to think that the magic of Christmas may just not exist at all?