23 Days to Christmas

I was just checking out http://www.buynothingchristmas.org/, which I found on Nate's blog. The website raises some good questions about consumerism and faith as they relate to Christmas. It presents the idea in a way that's not preachy, but actually suggests buying nothing for Christmas as a social experiment to "see what happens". One of the alternative gift ideas presented on this site, is to ask that someone give a donation to a charity instead of buying a gift. World Vision has a number of gifts setup for just this purpose and I'd encourage checking it out.

Now as I was reading this site and thinking about Christmas and Thanksgiving the idea that came to me was, "Why not switch gift giving from Christmas to Thanksgiving?" The point of giving gifts on Christmas is to show your loved ones that they are special and meaningful to you...right? Man, when you have to spell it out it sure seems suspect. I'm giving you this new blah blah blah to show you how much I love you and how special you are to me. Well I'll admit that giving and receiving gifts is kind of cool and I think it has it's place, but why does it have to be on Christmas? The tradition comes from the gifts given to Jesus, but recreating this gift giving (especially in it's modern form) doesn't seem like a necessary activity for remembering Jesus birth and life. In fact most people realise that the business and stress involved actually takes away from the holiday. I would argue that giving gifts is just as applicable, if not more so to Thanksgiving. Is this not the time that we give thanks for the people and good things in our life? Giving thanks could easily be translated into giving presents. Sure.. this would kind of defile Thanksgiving, but I think it much better to defile a holiday where we commemorate Pilgrims and Indians having some big feast (actually intentions may not have been so friendly) than the holiday where we commemorate the birth of Jesus Christ! Anyway the holidays are close enough together that I think you could pull it off. Next year I'm going to try and give all my Christmas gifts on Thanksgiving and see what happens.

I had a disturbing dream last night, but it seems kind of funny now. In my dream there was a puppy that kept chasing me. The puppy would jump up on me and start biting at my hand or leg. Not just playful biting, but more like "chew your hand off biting"! Nothing would stop the puppy. I would kick it across the room or try to smash it with my free hand, but the thing kept coming! There were also other people around who kept saying the puppy was cute and would get mad at me when I kicked it. I'm sure there's some very obvious psycho analysis to be done here, but I'd don't want to think about that right now!