Tuesday, December 7, 2010

Bad Year for Christmas?

Lower wages, higher expenses, job insecurity, and your family has downsized from a two income to a one income household, and not by choice!  Money is tight, anxiety is high, you’re barely making ends meet, and here comes Christmas!  It looks like it’s not going to be “a good Christmas” this year.  What to do?

Two simple but not very acceptable options come to mind: (1) reject Christmas altogether or (2) close your eyes, avoid reality, and spend, spend, spend—providing that your credit limit is not already maxed out!

Underemployment means little money; and “no job” means no money.  That’s reality.  But must that reality change the Christmas experience?  Is it possible to celebrate and have a good Christmas even when you’re broke?

How about a third option?  How about returning to the heart of the Christmas celebration with a devout celebration of faith, food, fellowship, and fun?  You may not be able to do much about your empty pocket book.  But a change of heart, soul, mind and spirit, costs you nothing and is far more enriching than anything you can buy at the mall. 

Start by turning Christmas back into a Celebration of Faith.  Take your family to any number of the various musical, dramatic, and liturgical Christmas Services that churches within your community present at this time of year.

If you’ve not been to church in years, go with an open mind and most especially an open heart; relax and enjoy the service, take it all in.  And here’s the challenge, while doing so, seek God and ask for a spiritual awakening.  What a priceless gift that would be to receive!

If you are a regular church goer, participate whole heartedly sing, read, pray, worship—celebrate the birth of Christ, the gift of salvation, and the Faith.  Make it as meaningfully applicable to you and your family’s circumstance as possible.  Seek a change of heart and attitude; re-connect with your spiritual riches—“blessed are the poor, for they shall inherit….”

Secondly, do not be ashamed to celebrate Christmas at whatever economic level you can afford, but do celebrate.  Start with what you have and where you’re at.  Consider what you do have and what you can afford, ignore what is beyond your means.

Food is festive!  So then, while sticking to your budget, make or buy special treats and delectable dishes that you and your family will enjoy eating together.  Get the kids involved in cooking, baking, or buying these treats.  Let the food itself be celebrated as a family gift.  Eating a celebratory treat with plastic fork on paper plates can be as delightfully tasty as eating off gilded china with silver spoons.

Thirdly, deliberately connect with others of a kindred spirit.  In church language it is called “fellowship.”  Seek the company of likeminded souls and invite that company over to celebrate with you (or accept their invitation to share with them), a simple, humble Christmas celebration that is truly honest in its gratitude and humble in its simplicity but is nevertheless sincerely celebrative.  That is, share.  Pass the spirit on.  It cost nothing to be kind and polite, throw someone a smile, or offer a helping hand.

And finally have fun.  Be inventive.  Find a way to enjoy not only what you have, but also a way to enjoy it with others, having fun as you do so.

In short, when it comes to celebrating Christmas, attitude is everything.  One’s spirit and mindset—the heart—makes all the difference in the world.  Children pick up on this immediately.  If you have a woe is me, poor us, self-pitying attitude entering into Christmas, so will your children.  There is no place for self-pity in a Christmas celebration, for it ignores the greatest gift of all—“For unto you is born this day, a Savior, who is Christ the Lord.”  (See Luke 2:10-11.)

Your attitude, undergirded by your actions, will demonstrate to your children that Christmas can still be enjoyed and appreciated even when there is very little under the tree.  (The animated story of The Grinch Who Stoled Christmas makes this point quite nicely; don’t you think?)  Don’t focus on what you don’t have or can’t get.  Rather, focus on what God may want of you and for you.  Use these difficult times to ignite or reawaken a spiritual vitality, a renewed hope and faith, faith that can move mountains. 

Jesus said of Himself, “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because He has anointed me to bring good news to the poor.  He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.”  (See Luke 4:18-19.)  Perhaps this is the year in which God’s favor shall shine upon you.

p.s. Wellspring Church of Skippack’s Christmas program is December 18, Saturday, 6:00 p.m.  All are welcome.  Many other churches in the area also have excellent programs.

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