More Presence Than Presents

It has begun. I heard for a second time on the news today a story about someone trampled by a stampede of shoppers. We used to sing about Grandma getting run over by a reindeer; the truth, as they say, is stranger than fiction.

Which brings to mind for me what started all this hullabaloo: God declared, "I'm tired of being separate from these humans whom I created and love. So I will come and be with them." Thus Jesus Christ was born. God brought the divine presence to a humanity that desperately needs it.

The risky arrival of a newborn into the world is Yahweh's "I love you" to humanity. How different from the gift that says, "I love you enough to trample strangers on the threshold of Target so that you could have this X-Box." As a long-time receiver of Christmas gifts, I think it is time for me to put my theological money where my mouth is and say, I don't need presents. I need presence.

I want to see you, talk to you, eat with you, drink with you, laugh with you, enjoy the silent and still night with you this Christmas. Do not give me a present; give me your presence. By the Holy Spirit, the Spirit of Christ will be in you, for me, on that day. So let us be together and relish the Presence who is the greatest gift. Let us not obscure the Immutable with the plastic. Let us not hide the glorious with the glittering. Let's do the real gift-giving of Christmas, by giving presence rather than presents.

But you will object, won't you? It's tradition, and gift-giving can be as much a blessing to the giver as to the recipient. Should I deprive you of that pleasure? Perhaps not. Therefore let me offer suggestions--a compromise, if you will--for finding the presence in the presents.

Give me an I.O.U. for supper out at some dive where they'll let us stay and talk over cold coffee all evening. Bring me a bottle of wine with two, three, or four glasses, a corkscrew, and the introduction, "It's five o'clock somewhere!" Enjoy the company of my daughter for an evening while my wife and I get away for a date. Set a date to reconnect over the phone. Send a restaurant gift certificate with enough value that I need to bring someone else, or more. Send a card that tells me you've donated money in my honor for clean water in Burkina Faso, with a prayer for me to read aloud. Or just come over, if it's been too long. If you really must get me something, then please make it yourself--from scratch. Let it carry, in the very fiber of its being, your presence instead of a peeled-off price tag. I love you, and I'd rather just have you than any other thing in the world.

I have so much stuff that I can't keep it clean or in its place most days. More often than not I succumb to the temptation to sacrifice life for stuff, much like the Life offered at the first Christmas was trampled for the sake of riches. I don't need more of that. I need fewer presents and more presence.

May your Christmas be full of the same.

~emrys