It's a holy day

I love Christmas time. Of all of our household decorations, the Christmas ones take up almost half of our garage. We love family time, giving presents and wearing scarfs. But this year, we have celebrated the holy day in another way.

We bought zero presents. We hung zero lights. We went to the mall, um, maybe once. Christmas this year has been for us like it might have been before World War II. You know, before consumerism became spirituality.

To be honest, deep down inside, I had hoped that the government would not bail out the banks. Secretly, I hoped that the economy would fail. Visions of bartering and hard work far from credit and mass-marketing schemes had begun to dance in my head. Alas, my dream did not come true. For everyone else, at least.

A few months back (when smart planners start to forecast Christmas presents), a new video entered my life.

Click here to watch it yourself. (It's about 20 mins in length.)

It is one of those videos that I inadvertently alluded to in my previous post. It's about something that I always knew was inherently evil but could never explain why. It was just a feeling that I think a lot of people have (kind of like how a lot of moms hate tv). I didn't know exactly why, but I knew something was wrong. This video succinctly put into words, with documented research to back up every claim, something that had always made me feel uneasy.

Before the video had even finished, my dearest friends and I had decided to make our own presents this year. But making our presents did more than just keep us out of malls. It gave us time to use our hands, engage our creativity and spend a day together. After showing it to my mom, she too agreed that this year we would not exchange presents.

And we didn't. And it's been wonderful!

I can't tell you how much money we have saved, how much stress I have avoided and how much enjoyment I have received.

I have spent so much time with the people in my life this season. I have had days on end when I babysat for a friend, organized my home office and went out to a late breakfast with my family. I can't explain it, but it really feels like there is something holy about this holiday this year. My husband and I have slept in, cleaned out the garage and watched lots of movies.

I can't escape the imagery I came across in a book I have been trying to get through recently. It's a gorilla (I didn't write this stuff--I just read it!) explaining captivity to a human. A formerly wild primate, this gorilla, known as Ishmael, was captured and displayed in a zoo. And then later rescued and kept in a man's home. He said while he was in the zoo, he didn't know he was in captivity. He couldn't tell much difference between the zoo and the jungle. He didn't even know captivity was a word--so how could he have possibly recognized it? He had seen the bars between him and the lines of people that would come point at him. But he didn't know the bars were to hold him in. This sage gorilla then asks the human what bars hold him in that he might not know about.

I do have visions of a nation where the economy is not controlled by interest rates. Where corporations do not have more rights than the individual. But governments and economies are not the true captors. No, there is no economic plan or government constitution that can truly impact our freedom. Ask the families of martyrs in China who still praise Jesus in silence with huge smiles on their faces. Ask Jesus. He stays surprisingly quiet on government policies and voting. Because He knows that externalities do not take captives. If they did, He would have come down and destroyed them. Instead, He came down and destroyed sin's power over us.

Sin has lost its power! Death its sting! But do we know that? Poor Ishmael is still looking for the bars of captivity. But the only bars are the ones we put up around ourselves!

God sees the captivity and He sent Himself here to us in human form, so we could watch Him live in freedom. So we could watch and study and observe and learn and now we can ask and pray about how to be truly free. That's what makes Christmas day so holy. A little baby, just like us, entered our world to show us freedom. Well, to show us love. And that love is the only love that does truly set us free.

For my husband and I, spending Christmas free from presents and giftwrap has been freeing--in some ways. But it is not freedom in itself. Freedom begins in our minds, in our thoughts. As a man thinks, so he is. So for us, we have experienced some freedom from consumerism. But this freedom will not save. Only He saves. I pray that Ishmael, like the rest of us, learns this sooner than later. May our eyes be fully fixed on Him today and everyday.