Dec. 15, 2006

Some Find Ways for a Simpler, Less Commercialized Christmas

By KRISTEN CAMPBELL

© 2006 Religion News Service

Even now, years later, Suzanne Phillips gasps to think of her young son's attitude.

"No matter what I did, it was never enough," she said.

So after hearing "Where's this?" and "I wanted that," Phillips decided she and her now 11-year-old son Dylan Baker would spend Christmas Day serving the homeless and others in need at a shelter in Mobile, Ala.

"It really made an impression on him," said Phillips, who lives in Atmore, Ala. Now, when Dylan offers his Christmas list, he presents the items simply as options.

"He appreciates what he gets," she said. "He appreciates what we do have."

What's more, serving at the shelter on Christmas Day has become a tradition for the pair. "We got hooked after the first one," she said.

Phillips is not alone in her quest to avoid the crushing consumerism of Christmas. While merchants continue to urge people to model the gift-toting magi, some Americans are seeking kinder, gentler holidays either by eschewing traditional gift-giving or by seeking to place the present exchanges in a spiritual context.

"The problem with Christmas is not that it's too much fun, it's that it's not enough fun," said Bill McKibben, author of "Hundred Dollar Holiday: The Case for a More Joyful Christmas." "We've allowed ourselves to buy into a very limited, consumerist, grinchy notion of what constitutes a good Christmas."

Several years ago, McKibben concocted the idea of a "hundred dollar holiday," one in which he suggests spending only the aforementioned sum in observance of Christmas.

"In our family, the great pleasures involve making things to give to people," he said, noting that last year they made maple sugar candy with syrup they'd harvested.

"The weight of the commercial and consumer machine is very strong, but kids are able to understand that Christmas is somebody else's birthday," he said. They know that when they celebrate someone else's birthday, the festivities focus on the person whose special day it is -- not on the guests.

In this case, McKibben said, the stakes are raised because the person whose birth is being celebrated grew up to tell his followers to give all that they had to the poor. It's ironic, he added, that people might choose to commemorate Jesus' birth with the purchase of, say, golf clubs.

What people really want, he noted, is time with one another. "An awful lot of what we do is a substitute for that," he said.

Still, said Stephen H. Webb, author of "The Gifting God: A Trinitarian Ethics of Excess," there is something cool about seeing so many gifts.

"Gift-giving is fun and crucial for the holiday season," Webb said. "I definitely wouldn't recommend throwing it out. But I think there are things you can do to get gift-giving in a proper focus."

A few years ago, Webb said, his family started a tradition that on the Sunday after Thanksgiving his family leaves grocery bags at houses around the neighborhood; with the bags is a message asking residents to donate what food they can. Later that day, Webb and his family pick up the groceries and take them to a local food pantry.

The grass-roots effort has become a fun thing, Webb said, with children in the neighborhood asking to pitch in to help his family.

"I don't think giving needs to be morose or sacrificial," he said.

While noting the pleasures of giving, Webb, a professor of religion and philosophy at Wabash College in Crawfordsville, Ind., didn't hesitate to articulate the joys of receiving presents.

"The material world is good," he said. "Giving and trading and exchanging of things we value is good."

Furthermore, abundance at Christmas is important. After all, Webb said, Jesus is a kind of a splurge from God.

(Kristen Campbell writes for The Mobile Register in Mobile, Ala.)