'Tis a Gift

A few days ago a friend who works with low-income students told me that one of her students was sharing Ramen noodles with his siblings this month so that their family could afford Christmas. It was my friend’s impression that they might be saving, not just for a simple gift, but for some higher status electronic item.

This story reminded me of my mother, who always said that Santa was a cruel story to tell poor children. She and my father went bankrupt when I was a baby, so they couldn’t afford nearly as many gifts as the cousins whom we usually visited for Christmas dinner. My mother didn’t want me to believe that I was naughty and they were nice just because I got fewer toys. She also didn’t want me to ever be without healthy food or a good education, so she put her money into that which she thought would nurture me, even when it wasn’t what I most wanted. Coming up on the two-year anniversary of her death, I appreciate my mother’s practical wisdom much more than when I was a child.

It is so difficult to resist the consumer competition that Christmas has become. Even religious people seem to have surrendered. Last night we attended a mass geared for children where the priest told a story about Santa during the homily and in his closing remarks reminded the children that “Santa loves children who are good,” so if they were good, they would “be surprised by what Santa would bring them on Christmas morning.” When afterward I gently suggested that it was really hard for families like ours to keep the focus off the consumerism, the priest nodded in commiseration, not realizing that his remarks contributed to the problem.

I guess I shouldn’t be too aggravated at my daughter for asking (repeatedly) for an iPhone for Christmas. She’s just doing what her culture tells her to do. The question for me is how to swim against the cultural tide without drowning (see last year’s post). I’m pretty sure that giving my children an alternative example will work better than giving speeches. So although I was kind of thinking that I’d like an iPod myself this year, I told Tom not to get me one. Instead I asked for a retreat sometime early in the new year—and a few pairs of warm socks for our trip to Wisconsin. (Like Albus Dumbledore, all I really need is some warm socks.) Tom also wants a retreat, and a shirt to replace the one that just got ripped. The children might not notice or appreciate the example now, but maybe they will in forty years, the way I appreciate my mother’s approach to Christmas now that I’m on the other end of the gift-giving.

In the meantime, Tom and I are trying to figure out how to give them some gifts they can unwrap, but ones that will nurture them more than Ramen noodles.