The Christmas season has a peculiar way of bringing out the best and the worst in each of us. The arguments in our house begin at Thanksgiving with Black Friday. Every year, my husband graces us with a diatribe on the incivility of shopping on the heels of giving thanks to God for all the blessings He has given us.
The Christmas season has a peculiar way of bringing out the best and the worst in each of us. The arguments in our house begin at Thanksgiving with Black Friday. Every year, my husband graces us with a diatribe on the incivility of shopping on the heels of giving thanks to God for all the blessings He has given us.
I, on the other hand, defend those who are excited to use gift giving as a means to express their love to friends and family. And though no one in our family shops on Black Friday, arguments about giving, spending, worship and materialism stir deep conflicts in everyone.
I think that the tension we live with during the Christmas season is healthy. Advent is a time when we become more intentional about our faith. And when we do this, we struggle to find the fine balance between loving God and wanting to do our own thing.
The beauty of Christmas is that this tension becomes palpable. So if you are feeling the struggle this Advent, good for you. If you are a parent, don’t let the opportunity pass without helping your kids learn some important lessons.
First, our children need to learn that loving God means expressing love to family, friends and Him. We grow up in America learning that giving gifts is a means of expressing love, and personally, I don’t see anything wrong with this. Do the gifts have to be expensive and perfect for the recipient? Of course not—what matters is the heart of the giver.