"Guiltmas" (or, American Christmas)

It's easy enough to prove: when you live in a Christian culture and Christ is the last thing on your mind, Christmas means everything in the world. Suddenly an ethos spots to light that never would have before: you can't watch that on Christmas, give gifts to others, try to tolerate their presence, try to be a good person, and tomorrow the ghost of today flies away.

I fear the gift-giving scene the most. Anxiety tears me, because I'm wary of limiting my love to a gift, and this is how so many interpret it -- it has to be good, thought out, or else there's something wrong with your relationship with them; something is spoiled, and now everything has come to light.

These times, though, the gift has become expected, therefore the gift loses its value. Criteria are set up: if a good gift, then a good relationship; if bad, then bad. What determines "good" here could be how much money one spends on the gift, or how thought out it appeared to be. The backwards blessing of the former is that expensive stuff always looks expensive, and even if it isn't, the appearance still counts; something can be thought out for days and still fail to appear thought out.

Christmas is, for most of America, the same 'ol materialistic struggle; a gift as an implication means nothing anymore, and this is the foundational point for every gift: it is not simply to add something physical to another's library of physical things, but to reveal to another one's underlying love in giving it. A gift is meant to signify a preexistent love from the giver. Insofar as love is revealed, it isn't the gift that reveals it, but the act of giving -- the act of going out of one's way, spontaneously, to give something to another person. The moment you want the thing rather than what it signifies from the person who loves you, there is something wrong relationally. The irony, though, is that a relational malfunction is assumed if the gift isn't shiny enough, or doesn't appear thought out enough. Everything has to be unendurably perfect. At heart, the goal is to shut the expectations of our relatives up. If love had really been present, none of this would be necessary.

So I'm down for an abolition of gift-giving. Yes, no gifts. Only cards that have our hearts on paper. The greed will be exposed, and perhaps our spiritual hearts will be revealed: how much, after all, do we consider Christmas the gift-giving aspect, rather than an interaction with the Christ who seems so much more mystically intermingled with the very air at this time of year? A clever gift of the devil, yes, to place the hunger for stuff where spiritual satiation is supposed to be.

I only want for Christmas: the love of those I love, the love of those who love me. Not too much to ask for.