Strains of the Season: Shopping
My daughters’ first Christmases were spent in Japan, where our family lived for ten years. While I wouldn’t change that for the world—they were truly wonderful years—I will admit that the holidays, for me, were also marked by a sense of missing out.
I wasn’t scrolling the socials back then, but I was online. I was ingesting a daily diet of American lifestyle, shopping, and decorating websites. Looking from my computer screen—which displayed the season’s latest toys and the trendiest Christmas decor—to my actual living room was deflating. Our holidays looked drab compared to the images online.
At times, I even felt like a bad mom. Were we preventing our kids from having full lives because they were missing out on the latest back home? Could they even learn to read without the handheld Leapster? Would their hearts for animals be crushed without a plethora of FurReals? And withholding American Girl dolls from them felt downright criminal. Surely we were ruining them as we missed out on the toys and gifts of an American Christmas.
You don’t have to live overseas to feel this way. In fact, this sense of wanting to give our kids the best and feeling like a failure if we do anything less—especially at Christmas—is more exaggerated now than it was then. There are more toys and better marketing today than fifteen years ago. Now we can see all those life-changing, gotta-have-it toys any time we scroll on our phones. We don’t have to be across the world to feel less-than. We just have to open Instagram.
If your heart races a bit when you consider the approaching holiday shopping season, you are not alone. We’re all trying to balance our faith and finances with our gift lists and desire to make this the best Christmas yet. Here are five truths we can keep central to our thinking as Black Friday approaches.
Our desire to give is good.
Our God is a giver, and we are made in his image. Generosity is innate in us because we take after our Father. Every good and perfect gift comes from him,[1] and we have experienced the truth of Jesus’s words, “It is more blessed to give than to receive” (Acts 20:35). We’ve experienced God’s good gifts, and we delight to give good gifts. Giving is good.
We are limited creatures.
While our God in heaven is without limits, you and I are not. We are limited by our income and budgets, our capacities and life choices, and where God has placed us in his world. Savvy marketing and credit card offers tempt us to think we can live without bounds. We see shop windows, filtered photos, and what our friends have, and we think we have to have it too. In reality, though, spending, crafting, or planning outside our limits today will lead to regret, stress, and a waterfall of other issues tomorrow. Living like we are limitless is not worth it.
Gifts are good, but their impact is brief.
Don’t underestimate the power of the ads you see in person and online. They are shaping the way we think about our own happiness and satisfaction, as well as our children’s. Most of the tangible gifts we give will break, go out of fashion, get too small, get lost, and become defunct for any number of reasons. Not one of them is eternal. I had to ask Google which toys were popular fifteen years ago, because I no longer remember. The Leapster, FurReals, and American Girl dolls felt important then, but they are largely forgotten now. Even our more lasting presents like time or experiences together have their limits; pictures get lost, memories fade, and something bigger and better calls from around the corner. Gifts are good, but that must-have feeling is the result of effective marketing, not what’s actually true.
Only one gift can really satisfy.
We and our children and everyone else on our gift lists was made by God and for God.[2] A truly full life only comes through personally knowing and walking with our Savior.[3] As the ancient theologian Augustine said, “Our hearts are restless until they find their rest in you.” Again, gifts are good, but we must remember that no material object will bring the soul-deep satisfaction we all long for. As moms, let’s not expect our gifts to deliver more than they are able to.
We are not what we give or receive this season.
In a culture that prizes both material possessions and outward image, it’s easy to believe we are only as valuable as what we own. We can subconsciously equate our worth and place in society with what we have. It’s easy to feel less-than if our kids’ clothes or the gifts we give are off-brand. These sneaky and sinister thoughts come a hundred times a day: I need that water bottle. My kid should have that backpack. I can’t give her that candle—it’s not the nice one. Rather than allowing our pride and shame to rise and fall with what we have, let’s hold tightly to what’s true. All humans are infinitely worthy because we are made in God’s image. We who are in Christ are already accepted and that will never, ever change. Our value and worth are not in what we give or receive.
Whether we are the mom who sprints into the stores at the crack of dawn on Black Friday, “adds to cart” in PJs on Cyber Monday, or doesn’t plan gift-giving until a week before Christmas, let’s all do this: let’s minimize our exposure to what’s hurtful and maximize our exposure to what’s helpful.
Here’s what I mean. As we seek to honor the Lord and love others this shopping season, let’s minimize the messages that will derail us. Let’s reject the voices that encourage us to spend limitlessly or to wrap our identities up in what we buy or give or do. This may mean limiting time online, limiting trips to Target, or limiting visits with friends who tempt us to envy or feel less-than.
And then, let’s maximize the messages that remind us of what’s good and beautiful and true. Let’s soak in the Word that became flesh. Let’s behold the babe in the manger. Let’s rehearse over and over that only God can satisfy. Let’s place ourselves and our children under the waterfall of God’s grace and fix our eyes on him.
By all means, let’s give and do and decorate and celebrate. But we can do so from rest and love and security in our newborn King. This Christmas and always, he is enough.
[1] James 1:17
[2] Colossians 1:16
[3] John 10:10
