Today was Cyber Monday. A lot of people have gotten most of their Christmas gifts purchased this weekend, between Black Friday and Cyber Monday. Others, like me, chose to save money by not shopping this weekend! Sometimes the hustle and bustle of the season feels like it takes away from the true meaning of the holiday, like everything has become too commercial. So why do we keep giving gifts?
In fact, gift-giving has been a way to celebrate religious holidays for millennia. Specifically, in the ninth chapter of the Book of Esther, when Mordecai established the holiday of Purim to celebrate the Jews' deliverance from the hand of Haman, he sent instructions to all the provinces:
Mordecai recorded these events, and he sent letters to all the Jews throughout the provinces of King Xerxes, near and far, to have them celebrate annually the fourteenth and fifteenth days of the month of Adar as the time when the Jews got relief from their enemies, and as the month when their sorrow was turned into joy and their mourning into a day of celebration. He wrote them to observe the days as days of feasting and joy and giving presents of food to one another and gifts to the poor. (Esther 9:20-22 NIV)Even earlier, during holidays such as the Passover, people ate together and celebrated as a part of their worship to God. Eating together and giving gifts to each other are ways to show love and to bring people together, which I believe God always wanted during holidays. Giving gifts to the poor during these times (people were also commanded to give gifts to the poor at other times in the Old Testament) is also an important part of our social responsibility, to help those less fortunate.
When the Wise Men, or Magi, came from the East bearing lavish gifts when Jesus was about two years old, the seeds were planted for the tradition of giving gifts at Christmas. It is likely that Mary and Joseph needed the money from these gifts to make their ensuing trip to Egypt to protect Jesus from Herod. (We know that Mary and Joseph were poor when Jesus was born because they gave the poor family's sacrifice of two young birds when they dedicated him at the temple, instead of a lamb. See Luke 2:22-24 and Leviticus 12:8) God used the gifts of the Magi to provide for them what they needed before they even knew they needed it.
Gift-giving, then, is not commercial or materialistic in and of itself, but is an entirely appropriate way to celebrate Christmas. Gifts do not need to be elaborate or to break the bank. I would like to highlight here on my blog some of my favorite gifts through the years (there are so many - I will only be able to do a few!) and what they mean to me.
The first gift I'd like to share is the pitcher in the above picture. Several years ago when my husband was doing campus ministry, we had a Christmas party each year for the college students. This was one of the highlights of my year, since I love Christmas and I loved having 50+ college students taking a break from their studies and enjoying themselves at my house! I had the whole house decorated for Christmas and had lots of Christmas dishes that all matched. One thing that did not match, however, was my pitcher. We served non-alcoholic coffee-flavored eggnog in a blue pitcher with a snowman on it. I commented once to a few of the students that I would have to use the snowman pitcher, even though it did not match all my red and green dishes, because a pitcher was the one item I did not have to match my Christmas dishes.
A couple of years later, we had moved on to our next duty station in another state. One of the students with whom I had become friends, Andrea, was from that state, and she invited me to lunch at her parents' house while she was home over Christmas break. When I got there, she had a Christmas gift for me. I opened it to find this beautiful pitcher. She said she remembered that the one item I didn't have to match for my Christmas parties was a pitcher, so she found one to match my set. I was overwhelmed by the fact she had been so observant and had remembered the comment I'd made, and that she had gone out of the way to find this item. Gifts that have a lot of thought put into them are so meaningful for years to come. Now every Christmas when I use my pitcher, I think of Andrea!
I'll share another gift and memory tomorrow.
Speaking of gifts, I have a lot of freebies for you this month. For today's freebies, scroll on down to the next blog post. There are several digital scrapbooking freebies, as well as a Christmas word-finds activity book to download at the end of the Knowledge@Kindle newsletter.
Merry Christmas!
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