Might I suggest then, that if you long for a simpler, more human Christmas, now is the time to start planning it. You’ve got a blank slate for 2008, and if you wait until the pressure hits in October or November, it’s too late. If you want to talk to your family about it, and have a bit of a discussion, now might be a good time to make some suggestions. You can talk again in the summer and decide for sure whether you want to go for it, but get the ball rolling early.

There are lots of good reasons for a simpler Christmas. One is the spending. I don’t think the figures are out yet, but in the UK it was certainly predicted that we were going to spend more than ever before – a grand £706 per person. That’s not great considering we’re a country with an average personal debt of £33,000.

Another good reason is the environment, with the UK throwing away 8000 tonnes of wrapping paper and six million trees every Christmas, among many other things. There’s lots we could do to make Christmas more sustainable.

To be honest though, you’ll know if and why you want a simpler Christmas. And if you don’t, you probably won’t be persuaded. I just think there are more of us out there who’d like to say no to the excess of it all, and I’d like to encourage you that it is possible.

For some simple starting tips, see the little book Do Nothing – Christmas is Coming, by Stephen Cottrell.

PS
Normal posting will resume in January. I’ve been on something of an internet exile the last couple of weeks.

A few years ago, my family (parents, sisters and their families) tried to make gift-giving more thoughtful: we made a rule that gifts had to be either homemade or used. The first year was a success — gifts were creative, thoughtful, appreciated. One sister gave the other her KitchenAid mixer because she never used it. I crocheted and knit hats and scarves for everyone (they were stylish and cute, I swear). My then 3-year-old nephew got an old clarinet, which he loved (“It’s vewy, vewy fragile!”).

The homemade/used theme didn’t cut down on the amount of time spent on making/getting gifts, but it made it a lot more interesting, and we continued the tradition for a couple more years.

This year, when we were discussing a new theme to help simplify the gift-buying, one of my sisters said “I just don’t want any more junk.” That’s the problem. We like to exchange gifts, but we don’t really need anything. It’s tricky to find a present that isn’t just “more junk” to the receiver. We gave up on the theme this year, but I’m trying to at least make my gifts useful.

These webpages have good ideas for less materialistic gift-giving during the holidays:

Hundred Dollar Holiday

Simplify The Holidays

Buy Nothing Christmas

Buy Nothing Christmas: Alternatives

I think it’s important to give to those who actually do need things, for instance food. You can find your local food bank through America’s Second Harvest.

A couple more charitable giving ideas…

Toys For Tots

Heifer International

I found a list of holiday food, toy and car drives on my local city government website.

Happy Clutter-Free Holidays!

by Erin Morash

Introduction

This Bible study guide is intended to invite young people into reflection and conversation about the meaning of Christmas and the consumerism that North American society associates with it. The hope is that young people will understand that Christmas is about Christ and not about shopping and that they will commit themselves to a celebration of Christmas which reflects this. This study guide is inspired by the Buy Nothing Christmas movement (www.buynothingchristmas.org).

This guide may be used at any time of the year. (One group used it in summer and called it “Christmas in July.”) We advise you not to wait until the Advent season, as by that time many decisions about Christmas shopping and gift-giving will have already been made.

The three sessions were written with a church youth group in mind. They may be used in a Sunday morning education hour, an informal Friday evening gathering or some other context. Each session includes a scripture text, a written reflection, several discussion questions and some action suggestions called “changing tracks.”

We suggest that you, the leader, invite one or more youth to read through the scripture text. Without discussion or comment, turn to the reflection and read-or, preferably, tell-it. If you choose to read the reflection, you may wish to invite some of the youth to read a paragraph or two. Invite responses of any kind. Allow the discussion to follow the interests of the group. Towards the end of your allotted time, invite the youth to consider taking on the action suggestions. Conclude your time by reading a portion of the scripture again and closing with prayer.

If you focus on the Buy Nothing Christmas theme for more than one gathering, make sure that you begin subsequent sessions by asking the youth whether they did any of the action suggestions and what the experience was like. Allow for the expression of feelings of frustration, anger or hurt that may have surfaced-some people may think they are crazy! If you sense the group is open to it, invite the members to consider doing a group action as suggested on the “additional activities” list at the back. Encourage one or more members of your group to send a message to the Buy Nothing Christmas website, indicating what you have done.

About the author: Erin Morash works as an associate pastor at North Kildonan Mennonite Church in Winnipeg, Canada.

Skip to:

Introduction
Session 1: Challenging conformity
Session 2: Turning it upside-down
Session 3: People not consumers
Additional activities for youth groups

Buy Nothing Christmas is a campaign set in motion by a group of Canadian Mennonite Christians, as a ‘prophetic no’ to the consumerism of the silly season. While that may sound like a dour and spoilsport kind of statement, Buy Nothing Christmas is actually a really fun and whimsical project, aiming to reconnect people to what is important, remind them to be thankful for what they already have, and to encourage generosity to the poor.

The campaign invites everyone to “join a movement to de-commercialize Christmas and re-design a Christian lifestyle that is richer in meaning, smaller in impact upon the earth, and greater in giving to people less-privileged.” And it’s open to everyone, Christian or not.

Ideas include subversive carol singing, downloadable posters, and quirky ideas like a Christmas catalogue “with things you really want… and already have!” There’s also an extensive list of alternatives to buying stuff, from vouchers for desserts and massages, to homemade recipe books or personalised calendars.

I really like the whole Buy Nothing Christmas initiative, not least because the same people have a campaign called Make Affluence History . I’ve mentioned it before, but it’s a name so similar to ours (and slightly better) I can’t help but feel a certain affinity.

More importantly though, my family have unintentionally subscribed to the Buy Nothing Christmas attitude for years. We just don’t really participate in Christmas. I think it’s mainly because we used to live in Madagascar when I was younger, and the potential for over-consumption just wasn’t there. Coming back to the UK, the huge Christmas machine just didn’t appeal to us as a family. It hadn’t been part of our tradition, and there was no reason to adopt it.

That doesn’t mean we sit at home and sulk, we still have a good time. We get together and hang out, we play together, and we’re finding Christmas gets simpler every year. Togetherness is what it’s about for me, especially now that the seven of us all live in different places. So instead of buying presents, I always bring something we can do together, like a board game or a jigsaw puzzle, or we’ll go out somewhere. We don’t have Christmas card lists, long lists of presents to buy, and we don’t spend huge amounts on decorations, trees and crackers, and things that are only going to be thrown away anyway. It’s very liberating.

I guess we have it easy, in that we all agree about it, and it comes naturally to us. If you already do the big Christmas thing, it can feel like you’re letting people down if you don’t. I’ve met people who dread Christmas, as it’s so much work and so much money and they just don’t have the energy, but they feel trapped by it. They’ve set a precedent, and now they have to live up to everybody’s expectations. If you’re one of those people, I would urge you to start talking about Christmas as a family. Deal with it together. You might not be able to make a clean break right away, but browse the Buy Nothing Christmas website and think up a couple of symbolic gestures you can do to declare your independence of that Christmas consumer pressure. A real holiday is possible, in the midst of it all, and I’d love for you to find it.

Let’s talk about it here too – how do you find Christmas? How do you deal with the consumer pressure, or do you embrace it and get a January loan? Leave a comment and let’s think about it.

For more information on the Buy Nothing Christmas, check out this website sponsored by Canadian Mennonites. My personal favorite? The Buy Nothing Catalog!

Lauren Winner writes:

…We are inured not only to the Christmas story itself, but also to our pastors’ annual rants against consumerism. Every creative attempt to make the season meaningful, to steal it back inside the church, away from the shopping malls and cheesy radio stations, has been tried, and most of those creative attempts have proved wanting. Perhaps the problem is that we don’t know what the meaning of this holiday, of Jesus’ pushing into the world, is. If we did, we wouldn’t have to worry about consumerism; if we knew what the Incarnation meant, we’d be so preoccupied with awe we wouldn’t notice all the shopping

Once again, let us seek an awe-inspiring understanding of the Incarnation. In the meantime, and until Advent officially begins, we’ll start actively resisting worldly Christmas with Buy Nothing Christmas.