Musings on Christmas

I read this today and felt like I was finally reading something new about the "quandary of Christmas." Tell me what you think.

I have this running quandary about Christmas. I get upset about it, because I feel that we American Christians make too much of it, and too little. Too little of it, because we pile all sorts of other things onto it, including some that have only the feeblest connection with the Event it is supposed to commemorate. If God did become a man, in any real sense, it is the most important thing that ever happened. Surely we, who believe it, could well devote one day a year to uninterrupted contemplation of the fact, and let Saturnalia fall on the winter solstice, where it belongs.


On the other hand, we make so much of the actual birth, and forget the things that make it more than just the birth of a baby (though even that is, in Walt Whitman's phrase, "miracle enough to stagger sextillions of infidels"*)--more, even, than the birth of the greatest man who ever lived. We forget the promise to Eve of a descendant who will solve the problem of Evil; the promise to Abraham of one by whom all mankind will be blessed; the promise to Moses of a greater prophet than he, to arise from his people; and the promise to David of a Son who would be his Master. We forget about the eternal Purpose behind it all: it's like telling a story and leaving out the point. Yes, it is true that God gave us His Son, and so maybe we ought also to give gifts--but what, and to whom? It is also true that God gave us Himself, and the only sensible response to that is to give ourselves to Him. There is nothing else that He wants from us, or, if there is something, He can take it. Only I, my ego, my heart, is truly mine to give or to withhold--and is therefore the appropriate gift to Him.


... Robert MacColl Adams (1913-1985), letter, 1982

* Walt Whitman (1819-1892), Song of Myself, in Leaves of Grass

Sustainable Stocking Stuffers from Eden Reforestation Projects!

I bet you're just starting to think about what to get everyone for Christmas. I won't go on a rant about how much money is spent on mindless gifts. You know all that rot already. Instead, I'll just share a sustainable, tax-deductible, life-giving gift option for you.

For each $5 you give to Eden Reforestation Projects, you can then take the graphics on this post, right click or save 'em or whatever and print them up on cardstock in your printer and hand them out to friends, family, co-workers, your paper boy, your mailman, whoever!

This is so easy, but so life-changing. Five dollars plants fifty trees in Haiti, Ethiopia or Madagascar. These trees provide jobs, shelter, renewed soil and groundwater and most importantly, HOPE.

If you would like to personalize your cards, or increase the amounts listed on your cards, just contact me by email at kelly.soifer@gmail.com, and I can send you the MS Word doc for you to make an insertions or adjustments.

Instructions:

1. Go to Eden Reforestation Project's donation page.
2. If you want to just send in a check for your stocking stuffers donation, send it to the address listed in Azusa. Please write "stocking stuffers" on the envelope in the left corner.
   
3. If you would rather pay by credit card or PayPal, scroll down and select the gold "Donate" button. Fill in the TOTAL amount you want to donate based on how many stocking stuffers you want to send. For example, if you want to give 12 stocking stuffers for $5/each, that will total a gift to Eden Projects of $60. (Which plants 600 trees!!)
4. Please add the note "stocking stuffers" in the "Add special instructions for Merchant" box.

Thank you so much. We planted over 4.6 million trees this year, and our plans are to plant at least 8 million in 2010. Your gifts will give us a great jumpstart as we try to keep up with the many opportunities coming to us on the ground in Africa and Haiti.

Two more sustainable gift options through Eden Reforestation:

• Match the amount you spent on your Christmas tree with a gift to Eden. Just think -- if you spent $50 on a tree, a matching gift would plant 500 trees. (When you send your gift to us, put "matching Christmas tree" in the instructions box.)
  
• Donate $1 to Eden for every Christmas card or photo you send out. Along the bottom include in tiny print, "I donated $1 to www.edenprojects.org for every card I sent this season as a way of offsetting all the trees I killed in sending these cards :) " If you send out 100 cards, you would plant 1000 trees. That would put you well on your way to giving an entire forest to a village. (When you send your gift to us, put "holiday card offset" in the instructions box.)

P.S. Duplicate the impact of your gift by SPREADING THE WORD about this to your friends and social networks. Just send an email with a link to this post, or load up the info on your status updates on Facebook, Twitter, etc.