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Christmas Pack #1
Alternatives Christmas Campaign
Alternatives Christmas Campaign
A Tale of Two Christmases
Lingering over coffee and pumpkin cookies at the October circle meeting, the women discussed the evening's program with mixed enthusiasm. The filmstrip, "The Celebration Revolution of Alexander Scrooge," had provoked a lively discussion, but when time came to apply it to one's own family - well, there the group hesitated. Lisa Rogers shared her own family's experience last Christmas: "Making presents and bringing in our own living tree was fun, but, wow, it certainly was hectic. This year we're getting a jump on the season. I've already begun making those gifts which will have to be mailed out of town."
"With all the relatives you and David have," broke in Carolyn Daniels, "that's a job in itself. By the way, are your in laws coming from Michigan this Thanksgiving?"
"They are, plus David's sister and her family from California. I just hope we can survive Thanksgiving with something left for the Christmas holidays."
As Carolyn drove home that night she reflected on Lisa's attitude. It seemed like lots of folks felt that way: that the holidays were something to survive, that the preparation, busyness and frustration of even the most sacred of holidays overshadowed their real meaning and the joy which could be found in them. When Carolyn came into the house, she saw her husband sitting at the kitchen table reading the latest Bread for the World newsletter. All thoughts of Christmas vanished when Jim shared with her this year's target for the Offering of Letters.
"At last someone's trying to find out about hunger in this country. Bread for the World is proposing that Congress undertake a national hunger survey to determine who and where are the hungry in the U.S.," Jim said. He was truly excited when he proposed, "The church school class has been looking for this kind of project. Bread for the World has developed guidelines that we can use to investigate hunger in our own community in addition to writing letters to our senators and representatives. This gives us the handle we've been looking for, but we have only five weeks. I'd better write for the additional materials tomorrow."
As they went to sleep that night, hunger was on both Jim's and Carolyn's minds. Except in Carolyn's case it was a kind of gnawing desire for a spiritual rekindling of the meaning of Christmas. Somehow, Lisa's experience with an alternative Christmas last year just didn't seem consistent with the filmstrip's message. That celebration seemed to contain the familiar rush and frustration, and then there was the business of the survival mentality. No, Carolyn concluded, her own family would have to work this out together if they were going to have the kind of Christmas that was lurking in her imagination.
The next few weeks were busy ones for the Daniels. Jim had agreed to organize the hunger tours and investigation into the hunger program in St. Louis. The St. Louis United Hunger Effort, an ecumenical anti hunger organization, had been very helpful in identifying the general problems of hunger and nutrition in the city, but they agreed that much needed to be done to raise awareness about the existence of hunger and the programs and policies which affected it. They welcomed the work being done in the church school class in trying to clarify the city's own hunger problem.
In the survey process, Jim and a friend had identified an entire city block of elderly persons who received their noonday meal from the Meals on Wheels program sponsored by another church. When Jim discovered that lunch would not be delivered on Thanksgiving Day, he alerted Carolyn who was coordinating their congregation's community feast. Arrangements were made to pick up the two dozen men and women and include them in the Thanksgiving dinner being prepared by the church family. As they gathered around tables laden with unfamiliar combinations of grains, legumes, nuts and cheese, no one seemed to miss the traditional turkey with all the trimmings. The prayer before dinner mentioned both the need to share the resources of this land more equitably with others, as had America's first inhabitants, and the joy which was theirs in welcoming strangers to the bountiful tables.
Carolyn had not seen Lisa for several weeks until one Sunday she noticed that Lisa, David, and their two teen aged boys all carried letters up to the Communion Table when the pastor called for the Offering of Letters. Writing their own letters to their representative and senators had been especially easy for Carolyn and Jim this year, for they were able as never before to call for the government's action based on their personal experience with hungry people. Jim had found that surveying the hunger needs in his community was a tough job. He was anxious for the pros in the state to take it over and come up with some data that would hasten the elimination of the poverty and hunger that his team had found in its cursory survey.
After church, Carolyn invited the Rogers family to join in a sandwich lunch in order to work on the alternative Christmas festival to be held at church the next week. Lisa appeared grateful for the invitation but said they were going to grab a quick hamburger someplace before heading for the mail to take advantage of the Christmas sales. "I don't know what I'd do if the stores weren't open on Sundays," sighed Lisa. "That seems to be the only time I can shop."
Bidding her friend goodbye, Carolyn thought back to the agreement her own family had made to set aside the Sundays in Advent to prepare for Christmas. That would mean no shopping on Sunday and much more time to reflect together on the true meaning of Christmas. Carolyn gathered her family and headed home to greet their guests who were already arriving laden with sandwiches, fruit and supplies for their afternoon of creativity.
After lunch, the families divided into three groups. The one with most of the children set to work making Christmons, Christmas symbols with which they would decorate the potted evergreens brought in to decorate the fellowship hall for the festival. A second group of aspiring craftspersons prepared samples of handmade gifts that could be displayed in their "how to" booth. The third group had been dubbed the publicity/organization committee. Today it focused on final details of room arrangements and publicity. Three self help crafts groups - including SERRV, a sales exchange for refugee handicrafts -- were either bringing or sending articles for sale. A large area needed to be set aside for The Christmas Kitchen, which was being planned by a retired chemist with a lifelong interest in healthful foods. Along with nutritious goodies being prepared by church families, he had bought bulk supplies of pecan and peanut products from Koinonia Christian Community in Georgia. Posters linking personal nutrition concerns with the world's hunger problem would decorate this area of the room.
Carolyn had been busy with publicity for the event. In order to reach as many interested folks as possible, she had contacted the religion editor of the local paper, who had written a good piece on their hunger survey at Thanksgiving. The editor promised to send not only a reporter but also a photographer who had special instructions to capture pictures of the "Alternative Santa Claus," receiving rather than giving gifts to the children. The festival's planners had borrowed this idea from Alternatives, an organization dedicated to helping those interested in voluntary simplicity to take charge of their lives, especially through the renewal of celebrations. The Alternative Santa would later distribute through appropriate channels gifts from the church's children who had chosen this way of sharing with other children less fortunate than themselves.
After the festival committees had departed in the late afternoon, the Daniels gathered together to reflect on their own family's upcoming celebration. They were still struggling with the hard questions of gifts for the immediate family. Wisely recognizing their own time limitations, they had agreed not to try to make elaborate handmade gifts this year, and, of course, expensive purchases had been ruled out by their covenanting together to make this a simpler Christmas. In the conversation's lull, 10 year old Susan shared something her teacher had said that day at church school: "When we spend too much time thinking about what to give our family and friends, it's easy to forget who we're celebrating Christmas for. If we want to celebrate Christmas for Jesus, we should think about gifts for him."
"Gifts for Jesus!" challenged her brother. "We already give offerings every Sunday and, besides, Jesus is the original man with everything. What could we give him?"
"Hold on there, Jack." Jim Daniels had been thumbing through the Bible and now passed it over to his son. "Try reading Matthew 25, begin there with Verse 31. 1 think you'll find that Jesus provided us with a gift list."
Jack read the familiar passage out loud and then closed the Bible in a thoughtful way. "I see what you mean now. Jesus is asking us to give to him by giving to others. That's kind of like we did at Thanksgiving by bringing those old people to the church to eat with us."
Suddenly it was clear to Carolyn what gifts they might take to Christ this year. "How about our visiting those same people on Christmas morning. I bet most of them will be alone and feeling very much forgotten. We could take them something good to eat or maybe a plant. Just spending time with a family might be the best gift they've gotten in a long time."
The family seemed about ready to end the discussion in favor of supper when Susan once again piped up. "Our teacher said this morning that the original Santa Claus gave his gifts in secret so that no one could thank him."
"Oh, you mean St. Nicholas, the Bishop of Myra," Carolyn said, seeming pleased that the class's discussion had made such an impact on her daughter. "You're right of course, and there's no reason why we can't do both kinds of gift giving. We'll give of ourselves to the lonely, and we can give of our money to the poor but in a way that protects their dignity. Remember before Thanksgiving when we decided we would limit our spending to that which we spent in 1978, but we would redirect it away from commercialized things to life affirming, energy conserving and generally more thoughtful gifts? Setting aside what we will need for our traveling Christmas morning party and subtracting that which we've already spent to put together the picture albums for the rest of the family why, we have well over a hundred dollars to give away."
In her figuring Carolyn had also subtracted the cost of a sleeping bag for Jack (which he would receive along with a promise of a weekend camping trip this spring with his father), ice skates and a handmade skating outfit of which Susan had been dreaming. Of course, gifts from various relatives were also anticipated. Carolyn and Jim had tried to share their ideas about a simpler Christmas with their extended families, but old habits die hard and it looked like some more talking was in order Wore next Christmas.
Looking for a way to hurry the decision and get on with supper, Jack suggested, "Why don't we just put the money in the kettle of that Santa at the mall. The Salvation Army would know how to get it to the right people."
"Well, they do a good job," agreed his father, "but don't we want to reach out to people outside our community? How about the victims of Hurricane David in the Dominican Republic or the millions of starving people in India?"
"Or Indians in our own country," chimed in Susan.
It was getting late and everybody agreed that supper was way overdue. "We'll figure out how to get the money to the hungry tomorrow night. Now let's eat." And with that Carolyn ushered her family into the kitchen.
It was the Sunday after Christmas when Carolyn and Lisa met by the water fountain at church. "How was the alternative Christmas at your house?" Lisa asked.
With a contentment rarely felt since childhood, Carolyn replied, "It was the best Christmas ever. Plenty of time with each other, making some new friends and a real joy about our gift giving."
Lisa seemed puzzled, "I just don't understand it. We went more, spent more and I'm worn out. We tried to make it an old fashioned Christmas so I was up after midnight almost every night sewing, making cards and decorations on top of the shopping and cooking. Well, I just don't understand how an alternative Christmas could be so wonderful for you."
In that instant Carolyn understood what had bothered her last October when Lisa had said much the same thing about the previous Christmas. Still caught up in the sell ebration system of a commercialized Christmas, Lisa had just wrapped up the old in new layers of so called alternatives. In doing so she and her family had not discarded the old habits, they had just added new levels of frustration in trying to do more.
As she turned away from the water fountain, Carolyn's eye caught the new poster outside the pastor's study. "One Great Hour of Sharing already," she mused. Then she looked again. She saw the words, "Lord, when did we see you... " And there was Jesus' Christmas list from Matthew 25. The picture even looked a little like one of the old gentlemen they had visited on Christmas morning. How glad she felt that the family had decided to give their secret gift to the denomination's hunger fund so that it could be used wisely in areas of greatest need. They had even skipped a holiday turkey and sent that money to the Crisis Fund, because Jim was still concerned about the disaster victims in the Dominican Republic.
Sliding into the pew beside her husband, Carolyn felt the new patterns of Christmas might easily become good habits. Looking up at the cross and remembering the poster, she felt like Christmas this year had moved her family a little closer to becoming Easter people, with a new life and a new lifestyle in Christ.
What Carolyn realized is that the changes in Christmas in fact, changes in all our celebrations must come from the inside out. Our celebrations can be an outward sign of our discipleship as well as one of the blessings of obedience.
by Colleen Shannon Thornberry, Staff Associate for National Service, Presbyterian Church in the U.S.
Copyright Presbyterian Survey. Reprinted with permission.
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