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Welcome to Stuff I Learned Yesterday. My name is Darrell Darnell, most of the time I prefer to wear black socks instead of white ones, and I believe that if you aren’t learning, you aren’t living. In today’s episode of Stuff I Learned Yesterday I share a Christmas story about 2 different catalogs.
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What I Learned Yesterday:
Christmas as a child and Christmas as an adult are totally different. As a child I had no responsibilities except to show up, read package tags, shred paper, navigate through all the carefully placed tape, and say thank you to the appropriate person. It was a pretty sweet deal. What made it sweeter was even if I failed at all of those things, I would still walk away with the same stuff. Christmas as a kid was awesome.
Once I got to the age where I had a job, I had to start actually paying for the gifts that I was giving and I could no longer depend on my dad to do it. Man, growing up stinks! Not only that, the older I’ve gotten, the less stuff I get every year. Does that mean I’m getting closer and closer to being on the naughty list?
We spent a lot of time at my grandparents house growing up and they would always ask us what we wanted for Christmas. Back in those days there was a retail chain called Service Merchandise. I don’t know everything that Service Merchandise carried, but I can tell you that they had a TON of toys!
Every year my grandparents would get the Service Merchandise catalog. I loved looking through the catalog and their incredible selection of toys. My grandparents would give us each a pen, and we would go through the Service Merchandise catalog page-by-page, circling and initialing everything that we wanted. Needless to say, we circled a lot of stuff.
My grandparents then had all the info they needed to tell everyone in our family what we wanted for Christmas. It was really a no-fail system. They were able to see a picture, title, description, and price of each of the things we liked.
While I certainly never expected to receive even a fraction of the items I circled in the catalog, I don’t think I realized how it was shaping my perception and expectations of Christmas. Christmas was all about me. It was about telling people what I wanted and waiting a few weeks to receive some of that stuff. There was never any thought about other people in my mind.
Once I reached adulthood, I began working at the bookstore. Even though it was a Christian bookstore that sold a lot of things I believe in, it was still retail. Even though it was a Christian bookstore that sold a lot of great things that express the true meaning of Christmas, it was still retail. That means that I worked longer hours and had more pressure to perform during the Christmas season. Giving gifts and seemed to be equated with buying stuff. Buying stuff meant sales numbers and percentages. Sales numbers and percentages meant that we were being measured and if things weren’t better than the previous year then things weren’t good.
I totally understand the business side of things and why measuring is important. I love that stuff actually. However, it sucked the joy out of Christmas for me and did nothing to make me feel like I was helping contribute to the true meaning of Christmas. For almost the entire 19 years I spent working for the bookstore, I did not like Christmas.
When Kari and I had our kids, I really wasn’t sure how to handle Christmas. I knew I didn’t want let them go through a catalog and just start circling all the stuff they wanted, but I wanted them to understand why we truly celebrate Christmas. At the same time, I wanted to give them gifts and experience the joy of seeing their expressions when they open up something that they really wanted.
We’ve primarily just focused on one big gift for them each year, and we’ll add in a few small gifts as well. One year we bought Addison a doll house. It was a pretty decent sized doll house that I stayed up late assembling so that it would be there to surprise her Christmas morning. We then added in a few small things to go with the doll house. Likewise, my son got a workbench with plastic tools, because he wanted to be a construction worker when he grew up.
However, before we remove bows, shred paper, or break apart tape, we do something else. We get up Christmas morning, gather around in a circle, and read the Christmas story from the Bible. We then talk about what we’ve read and have a time of prayer.
I definitely like having the Christmas story as part of our Christmas tradition. I hope it’s something that my kids will include with their families one day. However, I still felt like something was missing. I still felt like the focus was too much on us.
So one year Kari and I decided to get a catalog. This was not a catalog from a department store, this was a catalog from an organization called WorldVision. When the WorldVision catalog came in we let each of our kids go through it and circle the stuff they wanted to give, and asked them to put their initials by the items they circled.
I mentioned WorldVision back in episode 181. They have great ways to help those in impoverished areas of the world by helping them get fresh water, food, education, and other life benefitting resources.
Once the kids were done we sat down at the kitchen table and went through the catalog together. We talked about each of the items they had circled, and let them tell us why they selected that item. We then made our final selections as a family and sent off our gift to WorldVision.
Here’s what I learned.
Circling stuff in the WorldVision catalog felt a whole more like the true spirit of Christmas than circling stuff in the Service Merchandise catalog. We haven’t done that every year, and we haven’t been able to give as much as we’d like, but I’m sure my kids have a better understanding of Christmas than I did when I was their age.
We’re not perfect. My kids are greedy and materialistic just like I am. I don’t mean to be, but I am. I like new things and I like shiny things. Most of us do, right?
Wanting new things and liking shiny things is not wrong. I’m not condemning anyone who gives big or extravagant gifts for Christmas. I’m saying that Christmas is about giving something to those who have need. Humanity had a great need, a need of forgiveness and salvation. Christmas is the time that we remember and celebrate the birth of Christ into the world to bring forgiveness and salvation to humanity.
So this Christmas and everyone after it, lets remember the great gift we’ve been given and look around us to see how we can help and serve those in our families, our communities, and our world, and by doing so, perpetuate the true spirit of Christmas.
I’m Darrell Darnell and this has been stuff I learned yesterday.
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