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It’s that time of year again. You probably noticed that a good while ago. Maybe the first shelves of holiday merchandise started showing up right after the back-to-school sales. It was subtle at first, along the back wall maybe. But after Halloween, things really started picking up. Now, of course, it’s in full swing. Nodding wire reindeer, laughing stuffed snowmen, plastic trees with the lights already entwined, not to mention ornaments, cards, wrapping paper, bows. It’s all there. Everything you could possibly need! And more!

Tickets for the beloved holiday concerts and theater offerings have been on sale for at least as long. Your community’s traditional activities are advertised in the newspaper, if you happen to see one. Store windows are all gussied up and folks have their homes decorated for the season inside and out. And the stores are running sale after sale, offering unlimited gift possibilities for all the people on your list.

But many of us won’t have the money to participate in the consumer frenzy that comes around this time each year. Maybe you have college loan payments or your rent is due or your car is falling apart, along with those unending credit card bills.

And consider the environment. Where does all that stuff end up — the decorations and cards and unwanted gifts and leftover food? Eventually much of it ends up in dumpsters and then in landfills. Who wants to contribute to that waste?

It makes us ask ourselves: What’s this season about anyway? Buying lots of stuff? Hardly. What’s the center?

’Tis the season
In a diverse world, the consumer culture does provide something for all of us to get into. But it’s pretty shallow. Ask any barista about how tense and crabby people get during the holiday shopping season. We all want it to be special, and we don’t want the troubles that simmer during the rest of the year to mess things up. Doing the holidays up right becomes such a goal that the whole point gets missed.

But we all know that if you have family problems, or if you aren’t making any money, or if you just broke up with your true love, or if you are worried about keeping your new job in this economy, that stuff isn’t going to go away just because it’s the holidays.

And if you have friends who are Jewish or Muslim or Buddhist or nothing, how do you honor their beliefs and still do Christmas? It’s going to take some conversation to try to keep things healthy and respectful. And that might be awkward. Certainly not the wistful, starry, fluffy-snow-falling ideal we’d all like to cling to.

Maybe it’s good that you can’t give gifts to every person in your life this year. Maybe spending time together, doing things that are meaningful and contribute to the relationship are just as good as — or even better than —haunting the malls during Advent. Think about it. Getting together to make a good meal (doesn’t have to be fancy), maybe splurge on a nice bottle of wine or a great dessert, and then spend the evening being grateful for the year and each other. An evening spent telling stories or sharing memories could be a really wonderful gift.

You can decorate your place without spending a fortune. There is the old popcorn-and-cranberry-on-string thing. And paper cut-out snowflakes. What if you did some crafts with each other? Or baked cookies together? Or learned how to do a cool ethnic tradition, like making lefse? Listen to your favorite Christmas music while you are doing it. (continued on next page)

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This month we will offer a new faith reflection for each week of Advent. Be sure to visit again next week!

Week 4
Life. Service. God’s self as God’s gift.

For the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life a ransom for many. Mark 10:45

We give to show our love or to make up for something we feel is lacking. We serve to show our love or to appease feelings of guilt. We work to find a meaningful gift or something that will do. We are wrapped up in whether we’re doing enough or too much. Are we giving too much? Too little? Have we received too much? Too little?

In this season of giving for all kinds of reasons, we say that Jesus
came among us to serve. Jesus came among us to give his life. This is like a deep breath, a moment for reverence, in hectic days and fren-zied holidays. We say that God became flesh and walked among us — that through Jesus, God saves our lives and all of creation. It is a gift that is hard to grasp, so we say it — hoping for the gift of faith in the practice of our God who speaks into existence things that do not exist, who makes a way out of no way, whose great gift may still settle into us and we become gift for others.

4. What are God's gifts to you this Advent? What do you long for? What have you already received?

Week three
A home. A way to live. Justice as God’s gift.

God gives the desolate a home to live in; God leads out the prisoners to prosperity, but the rebellious live in a parched land. Psalm 68:6

In my first trip to El Salvador, I remember looking at the homes that the church was helping the community build and initially feeling sick. We were calling these “homes”? I thought I knew what it meant to be poor in the world, but I didn’t know. I was pretty sure going into the experience that I wasn’t rich, but then I thought about how the place I live would look to these people who were so much closer to desolate. And I had to redefine all my ideas about wealth and poverty, prisoners and prosperity, and what makes a home.

This psalm also reminds me how our prisons are filled with those who are poor: those who were too poor to hire a good lawyer, those who because of systemic racism did not have a fair trial, those who were too poor to have other educational or employment options. Is it the psalmist’s vision that God “leads out the prisoners to prosperity,” because that’s the only way to build a new life?

And who are the rebellious? It seems in this context that the rebellious are those who cannot envision and cannot bring about God’s transforming new world order where all have the gift of a home and the means to live. Even those who have dreams of changing the world get tired, are broken, and can be defeated. We gaze out at the tinsel-town aspects of this season and it feels like a dry and weary land. There are many who are desolate, many who are imprisoned, and we thirst to partake in God’s gift of justice.

3. In what ways are you tired, weary, and longing for justice? In what ways are you rebellious? What do you love about God's vision?

The Rev. Joy L. McDonald Coltvet is director of vocation and recruitment at the Lutheran School of Theology at Chicago. Her blog, "Blessed to be a Witness," is available on-line through www.lstc.edu.