About the great gift and the small ones.
Every year society divides into two large parts in its attitude toward buying gifts and giving them at Christmas. Some – scornfully condemning – call this time the storming of the supermarkets, and believe that it overshadows the joy of the birth of the Christ child, whom God gives as a gift to us all at Christmas. The others, those who do the storming, keep quiet and shop.
From my observations I can say that everyone shops, including those who scorn the others. It is unheard of that in any household there would have been a shortage of gifts on account of being disgusted at walking around supermarkets during this time. Some, perhaps, make greeting cards for their loved ones themselves, which is altogether commendable. But even then one has to stop by a shop to buy all or at least some of the materials.
Others are irritated by the fact that in the pre-holiday season, in the places where people shop, saccharine little Christmas songs are drilled at them. But even the irritated ones stop by the supermarkets, for where else would they have established this fact.
And so we all buy and will all buy, both those who are for it and those who are against it, and those who do not care. For how, after all, can it be without gifts under the Christmas tree!? Unless we also give up the tree itself, lose the joy of giving and the very need for Christmas.
This Christmas wordplay can be unraveled to the point of tedium. And it really does seem that the discussion about the topic of giving has become a ritual belonging to the season of Advent.
Yet it must be admitted that the Holy Evening in church, where we hear the message of the birth of Christ, has its own beauty and its own message, and the celebration within the family circle, where gifts are shared, has its own beauty and message. And in Christ these two messages are united. The small gifts that are procured in supermarkets, or made by one’s own hands and placed under the tree on Christmas Eve, teach us to give, to receive, and to give thanks for what is received. That is why, in their own way, they are like our tutors for the great gift – for the receiving of the Christ child. The process of preparing gifts is also a school of love, in which we care for our neighbor and learn to love the other as ourselves.
If the Christ child is God’s gift to us with all the presence of truth contained within it, then one can safely say that no other gift will be able to overshadow it. Only each person has their own time when they will catch sight of this great gift and when they will grasp its true meaning. And, further, when they will open this gift of God.
And, further, when its true value will be revealed to the recipient. And, further, when the recipient will no longer await this gift anew each year, but will comprehend that they have received it once for all times and forever.
Such a person will then truly and from the heart await the second coming of Christ in His power and majesty, and at the same time, like a child, will be able to rejoice together with those who are still in search of their great Christmas gift, awaiting anew each year the coming of the Christ child.
Rudīte Losāne