Christmas and Fulfillment

Santa wants You to do your Duty. From Blake Huggins

Happy Christmastime, everybody! Now that Thanksgiving's over, you can put up your lights and listen to obnoxious music without drawing the ire of Holiday Celebration Time Period Purists like myself.

Good post by Rod Dreher this morning, "Media, Black Friday and the Last Shopper," in which he, besides detailing the media's complicity in creating a consumption free-for-all after Thanksgiving, relates this sad comment on the state of the American Shopper Psyche:

Carr's ending is a jolt, suggesting a consumerist version of Nietzsche's Last Man:

Even consumption may have limits. Mr. Cohen said that in his 32 years interviewing consumers in malls during the holiday season, he had never heard what he did this year. "People really have no idea what they want," he said.

They don't even want anything. They want to want. Our popular culture, driven by news and entertainment media, and advertising, has stimulated their appetites, such that all they know now is appetite. I don't know whether it's more pathetic or frightening. Maybe it's frightening because it's pathetic: the Last Shopper.

Is this what the Consumerist Experience has come down to? Originally, man could view his possessions as a blessing, a means towards seeing Someone greater, but then we elevated material goods as an end themselves.

The act of consumption has become an end itself.

Now, apparently, our alienation has increased by another order: the goods themselves are meaningless¹, and the act of consumption has become an end itself. The Urge to Appropriate has become so generalized and ingrained that it has become our prime motivation. All we know how to do is abate the need, at least temporarily. This bears striking similarity to my current course material in medical school.

Addiction.

Consider for contrast this video my church just played yesterday from the Advent Conspiracy:

Interesting opportunity and needed wake-up call. We would be wise to remember Paul's words in Phillippians:

I am not saying this because I am in need, for I have learned to be content whatever the circumstances. I know what it is to be in need, and I know what it is to have plenty. I have learned the secret of being content in any and every situation, whether well fed or hungry, whether living in plenty or in want.

How often does our culture do the opposite? Whether in want or wealth, we are consumed with bitterness and envy. and as the fading economy forces us to live with less materially, what will we do relationally?

A friend of mine had a blurb on her GChat away message asking if it was ok to start up a Christmas Countdown. I say yes. We have 25 days. A brief amount of time. What will we do to commemorate the season? What will we do to heal the wounds of the mad pursuit? Will we:

• call up friends we have neglected, whether due to indifference in the face of a crowded schedule, or avoidance in the wake of old conflict?
• show concern to those we'd otherwise ignore, as if one could merit our love (how often others have cared for us, when we were insolent or ignorant)?²
• give money, when we'd rather keep money?
• cleanse our hearts so we could love guests amidst their messy lives, rather than cleansing our homes for fear guests wouldn't love us amidst our messy lives?³
• look for ways to bear another's suffering?⁴

Ostentatious verbiage to "put Christ back in Christmas" does little.⁵ We, and those around us, are best served by putting Christ back in our hearts.

Footnotes:

1. You want meaningless? Check this out. Wrong on so many levels. Kids do not need to make numerous copies of their artwork--even if it looks like a Jackson Pollock, it doesn't mean you can sell the prints for decor. Plus, why are we giving kids "adult"-like toys? Why are we accelerating childhood into miniature adulthood, replete with office supplies to match? Next they'll be wanting cell phones. Oh, wait... I had to use cups and string.

2. Matt 18:21-35

3. Luke 10:38-42

4. Mother Teresa said:

Once they came to a door and no one answered. The woman had been dead for 5 days and no one knew - except the odor in the hallway. So many people are known for the number on their door. The worst disease today is not leprosy; it is being unwanted, being left out, being forgotten. The greatest scourge is to forget the next person, to be so sufficated with the that we have no time for the lonely Jesus - even a person in our own family that needs us. Maybe if I had not picked up that one dying person on the street, I would not have picked up the thousands. We must think ONE, ONE. That is the way to begin.

5. I appreciate their sentiment, but no one else does, and that is precisely the reason institutionalized drives like this fail. In other words, there is a diseconomy of scale to cultural change: the bigger an entity, the less effective it is, primarily because "sentiment" is the first thing expunged from a petition. Emotion, care, and concern cannot be communicated via an organization, and an intimate and living interpersonal connection is absolutely necessary if hearts and minds will ever be changed. This is not to say that individual people cannot create that connection as members of a group, but the focus should be on the organization's resources reinforcing the message of love already communicated through the person. (Organizational resources are why larger organizations may have economies of scale (bigger equals better) in regards to financial concerns, but cultural change must be local). Too often, the member becomes subservient to the group, a nameless, faceless amoeba of mission statements and donation requests.