When I was growing up my mom gave everyone she came into contact with during the Christmas season a gift. Teachers, coaches, nurses, bus drivers, office staff, doctors, sanitation workers. You name them, and she gave them a gift. That gift usually consisted of a 50 cents box of chocolate-covered-cherries wrapped and tied with a bow. Or, since she cross-stitched, sewed, and crafted, something homemade.
I got my obsession with Christmas gift-giving from my mom. I don’t give as many as she did, but I have a rock in my gut if I go anywhere during December without a gift. Just last week I went to see my counselor for the last time before January. I brought her a gift. She said, “You’re not supposed to bring your counselor a gift.” I thought, “Oh, yes I am. I’m a product of my mother!” It’s fun to give gifts.
This past week I also went to Bible study. We have two weeks left before our break for Christmas. At the beginning of class, the director informed us that they wanted Bible study to be a “safe place for everyone” and preferred no gifts be given. If you want to show appreciation for the volunteers, a card or kind note would suffice.
This surprised me. Especially from Bible study. I started thinking about what this teaches our children.
As my girls get older and new parenting challenges emerge, I notice how different my parenting is from other people’s. I don’t see differences in people or the way they do things as a threat to my girls, but as an opportunity to teach them about how the real world works. My parenting philosophy has never been to create a fantasyland for my girls. First of all, that’s not a part of my personality. I’m very much a matter-of-fact realist. But instead of creating a dream childhood for my children, I’ve viewed my role as training them with real-world lessons that will benefit them as adults. I admit that sometimes I take this too far for their ages. I don’t hold too much back. But overall I’m comfortable with this approach.
When the director told us about the “no gifts policy”, I thought to myself, isn’t it a blessing for the volunteers (who spend two mornings a week at Bible study, one to prepare and one with the whole group) to get gifts of appreciation? Isn’t it more loving to look at it in this way? Shouldn’t the members, whether they plan to give a gift of not, be happy for the volunteers to get gifts?
Instead, I suspect the members are focused on their own feelings, and maybe their children’s. They’re focused on what they think it says about them for not giving a gift or being able to give a gift. For some reason in our culture, and even in Christian culture, we have this mentality that we should feel comfortable at all times, it’s all about me, even at a cost of someone else not getting a gift.
I tried to think through what I would say to my girls if they came to me upset that another child gave a gift and they didn’t. This is what I’d say, “What a blessing! It is so good that she is blessing your teacher with a gift and that she can do that. Everyone has different gifts of service, and some people have the gift of gift-giving. We’re going to celebrate that and be happy for your teachers who are getting gifts. Right now we can’t give an expensive gift, but if you want to give your teacher something, I bet we could come up with something.”
It’s not about the gift. It’s about the thought. I taught in public schools for 13 years. Thirteen years times 28 students a year is a lot of students. I couldn’t possibly keep all their gifts, and most I gave away. But you want to know the ones I kept? The ones that came from the heart. The ones that were a sacrifice. The ones that showed genuine love.
One student of mine was poor. She had never seen the ocean (and we lived in Georgia where the ocean wasn’t too far away). However, for Christmas, she gave me this plastic ornament that she wrote her name on with a black marker. That ornament still hangs on my tree.
Another student, a little boy with a similar circumstance, gave me a ceramic figurine of a little boy with a baseball bat. It probably came from the Dollar Store. He, too, wrote on the bottom of it. I still have that figurine.
As Christians, we’re called to look different from the world. The world tells us that it’s all about us and our feelings. The world tells us that everyone needs to do everything the same way. The world tells us that my decisions shouldn’t make anyone else uncomfortable (even if those decisions are a result of conviction or obedience to God.) We don’t have to do everything the same way, and this is a good learning opportunity for our children. Because guess what? When they grow up and leave our homes, people are going to be different and do things differently. Now’s the time to train them in this.
Our security is in Christ – not in our image, reputation, what we look like to others, how we feel, or what types of gifts we give or don’t give. It is a blessing for other people to have the means to give gifts and for other people to receive gifts. We should be happy for both of them. And this is what we should teach our children.
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