Almighty Christmas Dollars

Homer: I love you Marge.

Marge: I know that. You tell me that all the time.

Homer: Oh? Good. ‘Cause I do love you Marge. And I don’t deserve you as much as a guy with a fat wallet and a credit card that won’t set off that horrible beeping.

$$$$$$$$$$$$

Here’s the thing. Christmas costs too much. Not a little too much. A lot too much. Massively too much. It just does. All the way around. I know our economy depends on it. I get that. Whoda thunk that the birth of God into the world as a human would become the linchpin of western financial stability?

But it costs too much. It’s insane really. It's some form of cultural insanity. And the pressure on people who simply don’t have the money is immense. They have kids too. They have friends with all of the cultural expectations about gift giving. People say "It's the thought that counts." But they are lying. No one cares about thoughts.

I don’t know what to do about it. We try to cut back, but it's not as easy as you'd think. It really is bigger than all of us. It has very little to do with the real deal of Christmas, and I’m not saying it’s all bad.

It just costs too much.

That’s all I’m saying.


© LW Publishing 2011

Anishnabeg

The man cutting the tree, taking it down from the sky where it had lived for so long, raising its hands to the Almighty — that man, in his pride, broke the soil for the seed, a voice planted into the earth, a whispering that would continue to rise and speak, like wild-flowers, like the sound of a poet reading a holy book, like water springing from the ground and jumping into the thirsty mouths of children who laugh with the joy of the cool breeze and the sun, yellow and bright, caressing their faces.

The voice, still blooming when the season is right, still whispers the dreams of histories, from the rock and dirt that make up the Michigan landscape, still hints at memories floating in the waters of the great lakes. The voice whispers with the currents, saying, “The Anishnabeg were here, their lives singing in the soil. The Great Fish and the Loon, the Crane, the Bear and the Marten. On this land, laughing, eating, raising their children, they sing from the stones, from the sand and the seed.”

The man cutting the tree from the sky did not care for what he should have offered to the People. He did not care to speak life into their world, unless it might serve his purpose. So money spoke instead. And power. The language of commerce and comfort with it’s many adjectives of overwrought dreaming about the Dream, the dimming lights of a city on a hill, which had been distorted beyond recognition by the countless and pervasive lusts that fill the human heart.

The man cutting the tree said, in so many words, “Be like us or do not be.” Not for the sake of the Light, which would not make such empty and destructive demands, not for the sake of the People themselves, not for the sake of the land or the wonder of creation and what it might yield for the good, but for the sake of a pocket or two in a shiny, expensive suit, and a vague destiny that someone somewhere said had to be.

Memory continues to speak through histories and the symphonies of life. Someone remembers and speaks it. Someone hears again and speaks it. And through the stream of these memories, the Anishnabeg speak. They are asking...

“What do you need?”



Ephesians 4:17-19
Peace to you.


© LW Publishing 2010