christmas presence

Back in July I posted about a documentary I watched called What Would Jesus Buy? I was inspired to try an alternative approach to the Christmas season and promised that I'd post again when I had come up with that approach. Well, I found my answer! The following is the letter I sent to my family and friends on November 1st:

Seasons greetings!

As you may remember from last year I have started to change my approach in the celebration of Christmas! In order to do so, I must compete with all the holiday marketers who will begin to fill our television sets and radio stations with reminders of the coming Advent as soon as we put away our Halloween costumes!

This year I watched a hilarious and moving documentary called What Would Jesus Buy? about an activist group called “The Church of Stop Shopping!” that toured the country during the Christmas season and spread the message about the “Shopacalypse”: the mass commercialization of Christmas. The movie challenged me and other viewers to examine: why we buy so much, where we buy, and how we buy in an effort to identify what we can do to transform our habits and communities…not just during Christmas, but year round.

The movie also asked a fascinating question. What would Jesus buy? A Nintendo DS for the disciples? A spa day for Mary Magdalene? A new GPS system for Joseph and Mary? Economists predict that the average American will spend $801 this season, which ends up at a national total of about $241 billion. Something tells me that our friend Jesus Christ (the birthday boy) wouldn’t choose to spend that $241 billion at Amazon.com. So for as much as I love waking up to a tree bearing beautifully wrapped surprises with my name on them I had to ask myself: Is there a way to celebrate the birth and life of Jesus Christ without also celebrating material excess? Can I still retain the tradition of gift giving without also endorsing sweatshops, wasted packaging, and holiday debt? Yes!

Christmas Presence 2008

I approached the pastor at my church and told her that I was interested in creating a service project on Christmas Day to fill a need in the community and provide an alternative way to honor Jesus Christ’s life on the holiday. We discussed the large number of members of our congregation who end up spending the day alone because they are far away from family or simply do not have loved ones with which to celebrate. For them, Christmas is a dreaded and lonely holiday, not full of the joy and excitement I have been lucky to experience throughout my life.

So I devised my response: Christmas Presence, a community celebration to take place in the church basement that focuses on the gifts of fellowship and sharing and provides a place for people to gather and celebrate the joyous day with their extended church family. The benefit of Christmas Presence is twofold: it provides a celebration on Christmas Day for those who otherwise would be alone and also allows for an alternative to the usual fare of wrapping paper and batteries not included.

But Christmas Presence cannot happen without you! On this Christmas, I respectfully request that you not give me a traditional gift. I am a lucky girl and nothing I need can be bought at a store! (Unless you know of somewhere selling The Perfect Man. Because I’ve been looking for him everywhere and he seems sold out.)

If you planned on giving me a gift this year, the best present you could give me is a donation of $20 to Lake View Presbyterian Church designated for the Christmas Presence program. With your donation, I will be able to fund my Christmas Day service project and help to bring joy to the community and honor the life of Jesus Christ in a unique way. Money raised in excess of the program costs will be donated to Unitus, a non-profit that works to reduce global poverty through microfinance services, empowering millions of people throughout the working world. You are also warmly invited to participate in Christmas Presence.


You are invited to
CHRISTMAS PRESENCE

“No presents, just your presence!”

A holiday celebration for our extended Lake View Presbyterian Church family

Christmas Day 2008
4 pm to 7 pm

The purpose of the “Christmas Presence” event is to provide an alternative celebration for the Lake View Presbyterian Church community that focuses on the gifts of fellowship and sharing.

The idea behind this event is to approach giving presents in new and alternative ways. People attending the event can choose to give of their time or talents or provide the present of their presence; because the greatest gift one can give is companionship and love. The event provides a place for those otherwise alone or away from family on Christmas to engage in celebration with their “extended” family. It also provides people with a different way to honor the birth of Jesus Christ, with friendship and love instead of wrapping paper and shopping lists! Members can choose how they enjoy the event, but not pressured to do anything but show up and celebrate!

The church basement will be set up with different stations, where people can choose how they want to celebrate and spend time together. The stations will provide different opportunities for people to give “presents” in alternative ways. Stations include:

1. “Joy To The World” Music Station
Live holiday music provided by church members giving the gift of their artistic talent

2. “Deck the Halls” Christmas Card Station
People are encouraged to make cards for an unexpected recipient, the mailman, their favorite pizza delivery guy, or the new neighbor, to give some surprise holiday cheer. Paper, stamps, art supplies and markers will be provided

3. “Visions of Sugarplums” Cookie Decorating Station
Kids of all ages can decorate holiday sugar cookies. Cookies, sprinkles, frosting, and fun will be provided

4. “Prince of Peace” Letter Writing Station
In the spirit of peace, people are encouraged to write a letter to a soldier away from home, a political prisoner, or a lawmaker influencing foreign policy. Sample letters, addresses, stamps, and envelopes will be provided

5. “The Little Matchstick Girl” Community Art Project Station
Church members will donate t-shirts before the event and during the evening participants can decorate t-shirt patches that will be sewn together after the event to make a t-shirt quilt. The quilt will be a collective gift that will be donated to a local shelter.

Christmas dinner will be served.

The event will include holiday refreshments, games, carols, fellowship, and more!
If you are reading my blog and would like to get involved with Christmas Presence, then please email me at rachaelkay@gmail.com!

*Graphic design donated by Nate Stoner*

christmas in july

So, if you know me well you know I'm a budget queen. Yes, I get my kicks from spreadsheets. In the days of yore, when I was working in retail and living the consumer fairy tale (which begins, "Once upon a time, the princess had all the latest accessories...") I would begin to budget for the upcoming Christmas as early as July. As a college student, in order to participate proudly in the mass spectacular that is Jesus' birthday party, one must begin even preparing to shop early. And so I developed a projected holiday budget with half a year to save and scavenge for the
perfect material symbol of both my love for each special someone on my list and my joy at the birth of baby Jesus. And each year I happened to find at least a few of those gifts/symbols at places like The Gap or Best Buy. I was not alone. I know this because of the lines I stood in to buy my modern representations of frankincense and myrrh.

Yet, despite disciplined budgeting, each year I would always come out of the holiday season staggering. I made peace with it quickly, as I knew many of the friends I made standing in line at the Gap were also struggling come January. In fact, at my own job in the jewelry industry, we were warned that people would try to avoid taking out a credit line in January with the excuse that they had maxed out their credit cards during the Christmas season. Mind you, in serious retail this is seen only as an excuse. And if I were to accept that excuse from a customer, as a sales associate, I would be scolded and penalized for it.

On the lowest rung of the retail industry, sales associates experience how bloodthirsty corporations continue to grow, especially during the holiday season. And, like me with my July spreadsheets, the marketplace begins plotting early as well. Crafting all the ways they will win our patronage: whether it be warming our hearts and inspiring us to buy or simply wooing us with the lowest price. And, after frantically placing every last gift-wrapped piece of future garbage under the tree, we gather to worship and sing songs about a baby that arrived in the world to bring peace and love and deliverance...and free gift-wrapping with each purchase.

What?!

The documentary What Would Jesus Buy? follows a group of activists touring the country as the Church of Stop Shopping featuring a gospel choir singing spirited holiday tunes dedicated to the anti-consumer gospel. They were kicked out of shopping malls, Wal-Marts, and Starbucks all over the country as they spread their message of a non-consumptive holiday alternative. As both a choir dork and a member of the Church of Stop Shopping, I was very jealous of their travels.


But, thankfully, I was also inspired to continue to refashion my approach to and perspective on Christmas. I was lucky to grow up in a home with warm Christmas mornings and plenty of presents under the tree. Like many American Christian children, I was taught the story of the miracle of Jesus' birth alongside the story of the magic of Santa Claus. And after attending a candlelight Christmas Eve service and fighting back bored yawns amidst solemn worshippers singing "Silent Night" I would rush home to forget about Jesus and lay awake trying to hear the footsteps of my favorite Christmas character on the roof. Reinvisioning Christmas, without all the tissue paper, shopping bags, and wish lists is not exactly easy. Especially when hiding behind the evils of the consumer Christmas is the truly wonderful splendor of family and religious tradition. It is often difficult to separate them. Bucking the way our society approaches Christmas is like shooting the middle finger at my family.

Last year I approached my mother in August and told her about the recent conversion I had made to the Church of Stop Shopping. I suggested our family do an alternative Christmas. No presents we bought from stores: only homemade gifts. Instead of our traditional morning in our PJ's amongst piles of presents, we could work at a soup kitchen or help with a local charity. With the money we would have been spending at Target and Amazon.com we could instead choose charities that were meaningful to us and give to those truly in need. And for a little Christmas indulgence we could treat ourselves to a family outing, like a nice dinner together, where we could exchange homemade gifts and spend time loving one another instead of cooing at each others' store bought treasures. The idea was balked at and given an automatic veto. I was accused of attempting to ruin Christmas for my nine year old sister and the idea of perhaps working in a soup kitchen was reluctantly accepted as a sort of compromise.

Ouch.

So I took a different approach. In early November, just as the Thanksgiving sales were being advertised, I sent out letters to my family members, talking about my consumer conversion and asking that, instead of gifts, my family give donations to a mission in the Gulf Coast, where I worked for two months. On the back of my letter I included tips for responsible and sustainable shopping during the holidays. (One step above me getting on my knees and pleading, "If you're going to buy...at least do it fair trade! For the love of God! Literally!") Yet, only a small portion of my family honored my Christmas request. And I ended up receiving what seemed like more miscellaneous stuff on Christmas day. I stuck to my resolution of making all my gifts (with a few exceptions) and presented homemade gifts to every one on my list, while also gifting a few meaningful charities in my life. Yet, I still left quite a bit of gift wrap and even sweatshop labor in my Christmas wake. And my radical vision became a small, unsuccessful, one-man protest.

The reaction to my proposal for an alternative Christmas

So, What Would Jesus Buy? inspired me to throw away my Christmas budgets of yore, and use my neurotic spreadsheet-loving energy to plan a holiday approach this year that will be as radical as the little dude whose birthday we are allegedly celebrating. And that calls for some real analysis of what that even means. How can I meaningfully celebrate Christmas and the birth of Jesus Christ, in light of who Jesus grew up to be and the message he proclaimed?

What this means for you is that this blog is...

...TO BE CONTINUED!

Stay tuned for my proposed birthday tribute to JC.