Reflection
As you prepare for the holiday season, do you long to reconnect with the holiness that is the root of the word “holidays”? Does it strike you as odd that people are programmed to rush to stores at ungodly hours to buy some item that has been specially priced and hyped as indispensable? This is the season when the pressure to buy comes to us wrapped in the clever package of modern advertising. We are made to think we need more and more things. The rush to buy presents overpowers the gift of giving love. The spirit of wonder is lost in the consumer craze of these days. We lose touch with the deeper meaning of holidays like Christmas. Wholesome living is the opposite of this. It is based in reality. We find satisfaction in life’s free gifts of friendship, family, the bounty of nature and the beauty of the season. These are things we can share without cost or pressure. We can be happy with what we have and be free to simply live. Discovering what is “enough” in our lives gives us peace, time to reflect, and enables us to share our life’s abundance with others.
Prayer
May I live deeply in the things that really matter.
Action
Consider who really profits from ”Black Friday”? Support Buy Nothing Day and present an alternative to frenzied buying. Consider the most important gifts you can offer those you love.
Suggested Readings
Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect.
Romans 12:2
As we look not to the things that are seen but to the things that are unseen. For the things that are seen are transient, but the things that are unseen are eternal.
2 Corinthians 4:18
As we struggle with shopping lists and invitations, compounded by December’s bad weather, it is good to be reminded that there are people in our lives who are worth this aggravation, and people to whom we are worth the same
Donald E. Westlake
Gifts of time and love are surely the basic ingredients of a truly merry Christmas.
Peg Bracken
Once again, we come to the Holiday Season, a deeply religious time that each of us observes, in his own way, by going to the mall of his choice.
Dave Barry
Probably the reason we all go so haywire at Christmas time with the endless unrestrained and often silly buying of gifts is that we don’t quite know how to put our love into words.
Harlan Miller
Christmas gift suggestions:
To your enemy, forgiveness.
To an opponent, tolerance.
To a friend, your heart.
To a customer, service.
To all, charity.
To every child, a good example.
To yourself, respect.
Oren Arnold
Celebrate the happiness that friends are always giving, make every day a holiday and celebrate just living!
Amanda Bradley
He who has not Christmas in his heart will never find it under a tree.
Roy L. Smith
Christmas isn’t a season. It’s a feeling.
Edna Ferber
The excellence of a gift lies in its appropriateness rather than in its value.
Charles Dudley Warner
Every gift which is given, even though is be small, is in reality great, if it is given with affection.
Pindar