In Defense of Christmas Shopping

By Chris Sparks

Remember the 1995 movie “Babe,” about a farmer whose little pig, Babe, ends up proving himself as a sheepherder, even going on to compete with the more traditional sheepdogs?

One of the most painful scenes of the movie actually has very little to do with Babe at all. Again and again, we see the farmer working carefully, lovingly on a homemade dollhouse for his granddaughter. It’s a little masterpiece — and yet that laborious process of creation culminates in one of the most cringe-inducing scenes I’ve ever seen. The granddaughter is screaming, crying, shouting that she didn’t get what they wanted, that she didn’t get the store-bought toys she’d been hoping for, and the farmer stands by, sadly, silently.

I can’t stand it. Sadly, it’s not farfetched.

So I can understand the criticisms of giving and receiving gifts at Christmas, claiming that it obscures the real reason for the season. But those criticisms all overlook a few crucial pieces of Scripture and Tradition.

Key among them: the visit of the Magi, the Wise Men from the East, who come to the Holy Family bearing gifts of gold, frankincence, and myrhh.

At the very roots of the Christmas season, then, we find the giving and the receiving of gifts.

And more — the very essence of Christmas itself is the gift given to us by God the Father of God the Son as the Incarnate Savior. The Incarnation is a gift, a rescue, and a recovery of all of creation — another gift.

Indeed, the gratuitousness of the gifts given by God is essential to those gifts as acts of mercy.

God gives us life freely, even though we do not and cannot deserve it. Without Him, we are nothing. Everything we are, everything we have, all comes from God’s hand. All is gift. All is grace. All is mercy.

Through that mercy, we may return those gifts to Him. We may say yes to the Father’s merciful love. We may consent to be loved, and love God in return. But nothing of what we are or have is ours — save for our misery, our sin, our nothingness, as Jesus taught St. Faustina one time:

O my Jesus, in thanksgiving for Your many graces, I offer You my body and soul, intellect and will, and all the sentiments of my heart. Through the vows, I have given myself entirely to You; I have then nothing more that I can offer You. Jesus said to me, My daughter, you have not offered Me that which is really yours. I probed deeply into myself and found that I love God with all the faculties of my soul and, unable to see what it was that I had not yet given to the Lord, I asked, “Jesus, tell me what it is, and I will give it to You at once with a generous heart.” Jesus said to me with kindness, Daughter, give Me your misery, because it is your exclusive property. At that moment, a ray of light illumined my soul, and I saw the whole abyss of my misery. In that same moment I nestled close to the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus with so much trust that even if I had the sins of all the damned weighing on my conscience, I would not have doubted God’s mercy but, with a heart crushed to dust, I would have thrown myself into the abyss of Your mercy. I believe, O Jesus, that You would not reject me, but would absolve me through the hand of Your representative (Diary of Saint Maria Faustina Kowalska, 1318).

Creation. Redemption. Sanctification. All is mercy. All is grace. All is gift.

The heart of Christmas is the giving and receiving of gifts because the heart of the Christian faith is the giving and receiving of gifts. And that is so because the heart of the Trinity, of our God, three Persons in one Divinity, is giving and receiving, as Fr. Michael Gaitley, MIC, explains so well in The ‘One Thing’ is Three. The Father gives to the Son; the Son gives back to the Father; and the Gift given is the Holy Spirit.

So what we do with matter, with stuff, with wrapping paper and boxes, with toys and treats, with jewelry and machines, with all the many things we get and give to each other — all of that is, in some way (if we do it in the right and Holy Spirit) united by our faith into the giving and receiving at the heart of the Trinity. Our gifts become little signs, little tangible expressions of the love we share. Gifts can and should say, “I love you.” That’s because God became man. He took on a body; He joined Himself to matter, and so ever after, matter can and has been a means of transmitting love. We see this most plainly in the Eucharist, the perfect gift of God given to us, and the perfect means of returning all gifts to God with thanks, for Eucharist means Thanksgiving. Eucharist is both the gift we are given and the gift we give back to God. We give to the service of God the bread and the wine, the vessels and the vestments, the church buildings and furnishings; and then God’s grace takes all that and makes the Mass, makes a parish, makes a community and a communion. This is why we have a ceremonial presentation of the gifts, brought from among the people to the priest, and this is why then the Blessed Sacrament is distributed again among the people.

Our very worship is the receiving, and the giving, and the receiving of gifts, entering into an endless, eternal procession of giving and receiving, of exhaling prayer and inhaling Holy Spirit, of taking that which we have been given and giving it back to God.

All of life is like this! All of the turn of the seasons, the day and night, the span of life — all of it mirrors this giving and receiving. All of it is an endless procession, of unwrapping and wrapping gifts, being blessed and blessing.

All of life, then, is Christmas, Christ’s Mass, part of the long celebration of life and love, of the God whose name is “I Am” and who is Love. Every day, every breath, every season, all of it is part of the great “I love you” that is God’s act of creation, His act of redemption, and His act of sanctification — and our response.

So this Christmas, give gifts with generosity and receive gifts with thanks. Share your faith with your family and friends, speaking of Jesus who loves us, of the Father who showers us with every good and perfect gift, and with the Holy Spirit who animates us so that our earthly gift giving may be taken up and transfigured into part of the perfect gift-giving within the Blessed Trinity. Love one another this Christmas season, and thereby truly contribute to a world with peace for all of goodwill.

Merry Christmas.

Chris Sparks serves as senior book editor for the Marian Fathers. He is the author of the Marian Press book How Can You Still Be Catholic? 50 Answers to a Good Question.

{shopmercy-ad}

Photo by Kira auf der Heide on Unsplash

ONE

You might also like...

Saint Patrick (feast day: March 17) brought Jesus to pagan Ireland and transformed it into the land of saints and scholars. Let's follow his example and bring Jesus, the Divine Mercy, to an increasingly pagan world.

On July 4, remember that the Patroness of the United States is mother for all of us: those on the left or the right, Democrat or Republican, whatever our ethnicity, race, or even creed. Our Lady is the New Eve, Mother of the New Adam, and the Refuge of Sinners; she has been given the whole human race by God. 

On June 3, the Church commemorates St. Charles Lwanga and Companions, martyrs to the lust of a king who would not take no for an answer.