What to give for Christmas

Recently, I was walking towards the Harold B. Lee Library on BYU campus. I saw a custodian pulling a cart of folding chairs towards the library entrance. The cart looked pretty heavy for the custodian was making slow progress. I wondered how he would get the door open, and then how he would get the cart over the metal threshold bumps as he passed through the door. I saw a library worker waiting for him at the door. She opened it for him as he got nearer. The library has two sets of doors and the second door would need to be opened before the first one was closed so the chair cart could pass through. The librarian worker wouldn’t be able to hold both doors open at the same time.

An impulse came to me to go and help. Someone would need to hold open the second door. Someone may need to push from behind to get the cart over the threshold. But I hesitated. A student jumped in before I walked into the library and held the second door open. And the custodian seemed like he was about to get the cart over the threshold. Maybe my help wasn’t needed after all. I passed through security and headed towards the stairs descending to the lower levels of the library, watching the scene continue to unfold. The custodian was struggling to get the cart through the doors. Part of me wanted to go back and help. Part of me thought, I’m so far away, it’s too late now. The scene from Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol flashed to my mind. Marley has just explained the long, awful chain that awaits Scrooge at the end of his life, and that he would be visited by three spirits. Marley then exits through a window. Scrooge follows him to the window and looks out at the scene below:

“The air was filled with phantoms, wandering hither and thither in restless haste, and moaning as they went. Every one of them wore chains like Marley's Ghost; some few (they might be guilty governments) were linked together; none were free. Many had been personally known to Scrooge in their lives. He had been quite familiar with one old ghost in a white waistcoat, with a monstrous iron safe attached to its ankle, who cried piteously at being unable to assist a wretched woman with an infant, whom it saw below upon a doorstep. The misery with them all was, clearly, that they sought to interfere, for good, in human matters, and had lost the power for ever.”

That chilling thought followed me as I continued to walk down the stairs.

Said Marley to Scrooge: “Oh! captive, bound, and double-ironed...not to know that ages of incessant labour, by immortal creatures, for this earth must pass into eternity before the good of which it is susceptible is all developed! Not to know that any Christian spirit working kindly in its little sphere, whatever it may be, will find its mortal life too short for its vast means of usefulness! Not to know that no space of regret can make amends for one life's opportunities misused! Yet such was I! Oh, such was I!”

Such was I, and I feel awful for it. How many times has that scene replayed in my life in various ways? True, there are many times that I did jump in to help, to try to add some good to this world. Still, too many times have I passed up opportunities to be useful, to work kindly in my little sphere.

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Lately, as Christmas time comes and goes, I feel much like Charlie Brown, who said:

“I think there must be something wrong with me, Linus. Christmas is coming, but I’m not happy. I don’t feel the way I am supposed to feel. I just don’t understand Christmas, I guess. I like getting presents and sending Christmas cards and decorating trees and all that, but I’m still not happy. I always end up feeling depressed."

What is really hard for me at Christmas time is this whole idea of gift giving. Every year, I have to get gifts for family, I never know what to get. And I never feel satisfied with what I got them. I like this quote from Leigh Eric Schmidt, a professor of religion and politics, about our current Christmas culture: "The machinations of the marketplace are seen as subverting free participation in the effervescence of the festival; manipulation and obligation displace spontaneity and sincerity. Both the profit-making of merchants and the gift-seeking of individuals are viewed as supplanting community celebration; the integrative, unifying powers of festivity are lost amid the impersonal world of malls and the private dreams of consumers” (Schmidt, Leigh Eric. "Christianity In The Marketplace: Christmas And The Consumer Culture." Cross Currents 42.3 (1992): pg 342). 

Saint Nicholas, the inspiration of our current tradition of Santa Claus, is a great example of real gift-giving. Saint Nicholas was a bishop in the area of modern-day Turkey. There is a story of Saint Nicholas learning that a father did not have the means to provide dowries for his three daughters, which would likely mean his daughters would turn to prostitution to make a living later on in life. Saint Nicholas filled three purses with gold coins and slipped them into the father’s house in the middle of the night through an open window, thus becoming known as the Secret Gift Giver. Saint Nicholas saw a need—something that the person could not provide for themselves—and Saint Nicholas gave of what he had to help. And he probably didn’t wait until December 25th to give the gift.

Now, don’t get me wrong, I am not anti-gift-giving. I think there is something meaningful about this tradition of giving gifts at Christmas time. This tradition points us to the Great Gift Giver: Jesus Christ. Christ’s whole life, as told in the New Testament, is one of gift giving. How often did he stop what he was doing to respond to someone in need? Like the man whose little daughter lay at the point of death? Or the lepers or the blind who called out to him to spend a minute to help? In Christ’s greatest act of gift-giving, he valued our chance to have eternal life more than spending a full human lifetime doing something potentially meaningful or productive, and certainly less painful and agonizing. Giving of himself, helping others in need was one of Christ’s great priorities.

My problem with this holiday is my attitude about it. If the only time I am a gift-giver is on Christmas day, then I’ve missed the boat. Likely, the best gifts I can give will not be given on December 25th. Likely, they will be given when I am in a rush to accomplish something important and notice that a custodian needs help pushing a cart, or a stranger needs help jumping a car battery, or a neighbor needs to feel that someone in the neighborhood knows them and cares about them, or that I haven’t talked to my mother in a while, or that my wife needs a hug. 

I am grateful for Christmas time. I’m still learning with Charlie Brown what it is all about. I’m glad it keeps coming around every year to inspire me about what I can be and what is really important. Merry Christmas!