Jesus’ Views on Gift Giving

While most of us observe the holidays as best we can, there are always those who refuse to do so.  Often, these people argue that gift giving represents the commercial exploitation of Christmas.  Rather than spending time buying, giving, and receiving items we don’t need, they suggest that we spend that time in contemplation of the true meaning of the season, and working to fulfill others’ needs rather than their wants. 

Certainly, such arguments make valid points.  Observing the holidays can be stressful.  We carve time out of our busy schedules to decorate our homes, send out cards, cook and bake, attend parties, and participate in or attend programs.  Christmas also serves as a magnet, reminding us of past events (good and bad), as well as the friends and family members no longer with us.  Coming as it does at the end of the year, it coincides with our natural tendency to review the last twelve months, and compare our intentions with our achievements.  With so much going on, traveling to stores, searching for appropriate gifts for everyone on your list, wrapping them, and finally handing them out can seem like an immense, meaningless, and unnecessary task. 

While I acknowledge the above arguments, I cannot believe that anyone truly dislikes receiving gifts.  Especially not from friends and loved ones, and particularly gifts carefully chosen with a person’s interests in mind.  In regards to proper gift giving, I’m not talking about getting an item you need, but something that you’d love to own, even if you might never justify buying it for yourself.  People often hold onto a well-chosen gift long after its usefulness has expired, even if it clutters up their home.  It reminds them of the giver, and the sentiment behind it.  Even if the giver is no longer their friend, lives far away now, or has passed on into eternity, the present remains a link to past times, the fellowship they once shared, and the importance in which the person once held them.

Christians are particularly adept at arguing against the importance of gift giving at Christmas.  They point to the homeless, to the programs that help families in need, or to the starving millions in other countries.  They trot out figures such as the amount of money people in their country cumulatively spend on presents (as if such figures could ever be calculated accurately) versus the amount of financial aid their government gave to a less developed country in past years.  Pastors even preach from the pulpit that, faced by so much need, gift giving represents greed and selfishness. 

This is nothing new.  Christians are People of the Word, and ever since there has been a Bible, Christians have used scripture to justify anything they did or did not want to do.  So perhaps I’m merely twisting the Word to my own purposes when I point out that several wealthy and wise men once undertook a long and arduous journey to give an infant lavish gifts he didn’t need, and that his parents, with the exception of the gold, had no practical use for.  Perhaps I’m equally wrong to point out that all four gospels record an incident in which a woman anoints Jesus with expensive perfume.  Some onlookers were offended by the woman’s act, as according to Mark 14:3-9, the perfume cost 300 denarii, which equaled the amount of money the average laborer would make in a year.  The disciples point out that the perfume could have been sold, and the proceeds given to the poor.  Yet what does Jesus say?  “Why are you bothering this woman?” he asks them.  “She has done a beautiful thing.  The poor you will always have with you, but you will not always have me.” (NIV version)

If such stories as Jesus’ parable of the Good Samaritan teach us anything, it is that providing for others’ needs is mandatory, not optional.  But people have emotional needs too, and after the physical ones have been met, those should be addressed as well.  Others can do as they wish, but I choose to give those I love and care for gifts that they do not need, but I think they’ll appreciate.  In the process, I’m making my holiday season busier and more stressful.  Perhaps I’m also pandering to commercial interests.  But I know I will not have those special people with me forever, and so I wish to thank them, in this way, and especially at Christmas, for their friendship and love.  Perhaps, as Jesus said, I am even doing a beautiful thing.  At least, that’s my intention.

Dragon Dave

Golson The Strongman

No one thinks bigger than Kevin J. Anderson

In Kevin J. Anderson’s new book Clockwork Angels, we meet Golson, a strongman in a circus.  He pleases his crowds by loading every weight he owns except two onto his barbell, and then lifts the immense load above his head.  But he never adds those last two weights. Instead, they rest off to the side of the stage, bound with a chain and a padlock. 

While he’s far stronger than most everyone else, and feels like he should be able to lift more, Golson is afraid to push himself too hard.  For the last time his mentor tried to beat his personal best, he couldn’t handle the weight.  Instead, he was crushed on stage, while the audience watched.

In the early 1980s, author Piers Anthony experienced a series of excellent three mile runs.  Previously, he had never strung together more than three twenty-two minute runs in a row.  Suddenly, he found himself running faster.  Each thrice-weekly run was under the magical twenty-two minute mark.  As months passed, his speed increased further.  After seven months, he was beneath the twenty-one minute mark. 

Concurrently, Piers Anthony's regimen of Japanese pushups, done on alternate days, decreased in time.  From his normal seventy-five in five minutes, he brought the time down to four minutes-and-seven seconds.  Both remarkable streaks ended when physical pain landed him in the hospital.  Although it turned out that he suffered from nothing more than a kidney stone (mentioned in “Dreaming of Kevin J. Anderson”), I have to wonder: was his body signaling that he had stressed it too far, and he had exceeded the limits of his physical capabilities? 

Like Piers Anthony during the 1980s, Kevin J. Anderson completes several books each year.  How much he pushes against the upper boundaries of his capabilities, or how regularly he exceeds his previous limits, I don’t know.  But I do remember, in his memoir On Writing, that after Stephen King reached each day’s word count goal, he took the rest of the working day off.  He also gave himself time after completing the rough draft for his mind to relax, before he launched into the process of revision.

This week I finished the rough draft of my second dragon novel.  My rational mind tells me I should immediately leap back into the first one, and start revising it, but experience has taught me that when I push my creative muscles too far, they give up, and leave me unable to focus on any writing for a while.  Given how difficult I found it to concentrate this past weekend, I’m listening to experience for the rest of this week.  Hopefully, I’ll be ready to hit the first novel hard next week.  At least that’s the plan.

I was recently shocked to learn that an acquaintance, someone who’s always worked harder than me, had a stroke.  As he's in his twenties, it seems a little too early for that to occur naturally.  Golson’s decision reminds me that, while every day I should do what I can, I cannot do more than I can, for a long period of time, without facing the consequences of excessive physical and mental stress.  In a country where productivity and efficiency seem like gods, his example may strike some as foolish, but to me it seems wise. 

Dragon Dave

Related Dragon Cache entries

Dreaming of Kevin J. Anderson