Restless after the Holidays

It is 4:34 and I cant sleep. I got super frustrated earlier. A lot has been whizzing through my head, not just tonight, but the past two weeks. So here it goes.

First of all, why the heck is it called the "Season of Giving?" Is it because we want to feel better about ourselves after a year of gorging our spoiled rotten lives of consumerism and.. well I cant think of anything else. Is it because we want a time of year to be selfishly selfless? Or is it because we are so caught up in our busy gogogogo lives that we have to have a countrywide issued date to think about others? Maybe we have been brainwashed so that when it is cold out and the kind old man is out ringing his silver bell a switch gets turned on that tells us, "Congratulations! It is now time to buy more for others." Don't get me wrong, I love Christmas, and I love giving to people, especially to those closest to me, but we shouldn't always give just when the calendar and culture expects you to. I think it is great to have a special time set aside to spend time with family and have an especially nice time, and more importantly celebrate the birth of our Lord, but we should not reserve this, especially the latter for only this time of year.

Another thing that gets me is people not giving even a dollar to help a charity when going through the check out. If you honestly need to be saving that dollar then please do! It is amazing how far a dollar can go. But it gets me when on a busy day of checking people out, only three people out of seventy five customers donate. My work supports the March of Dimes to help prevent premature births, fund research, and help families. Most people said "No, not today," but the worst response was a woman who gave me a dirty look, sniffed, and told me she doesn't like others telling her what organizations to give her money to. One, retail stores fundraisers don't just fund any small, half started cause. They do a lot of good. And two, from the diamond the size of your face on your hand and your shiny car parked wrong in the parking lot, it isn't gonna hurt you to give a dollar to help other families babies.

Working in retail doesn't help me with this because, more than any other time, people are buying and exchanging. My favorite customer, probably this whole year, was a lady who was buying really nice pairs of shoes for two little boys she didn't know. Her work heard about a family who had no money and unanimously decided to make this Christmas amazing for them. I love it when Churches adopt family's who are struggling, but it really struck me as amazing when this woman came up and spent over a hundred dollars on these two boys. She was worried that the shoes wouldn't meet the needs that the boys had, and that they would like them. Then she continued telling me about their wish lists and how she couldn't wait for her office to finally send everything. I was helping her for half an hour and the only time she talked about herself was when in reference to her and her office, and her hopes for the kids who got this beautiful womans gifts.

Now I am not saying don't stop Christmas, don't buy things for others, and don't give (or give overboard without thought to your priority's, especially when providing for your family), but what I am saying is that we need to make sure that what we do and why we do it are for the right reasons. Read your kids the REAL Christmas story, get excited about helping someone you don't know, make a point to spend time with friends and invite someone new, have a heart that does the things that make the Holidays special for the right reasons. Let's live our lives to remember and not regret, let's give with no thought about a return, let's live with integrity and zeal the opportunity to be true Kingdom people. Let's have a Season of Giving where we remember a year of the fullness of living our passions, giving to bless, and to the gift of the new year to challenge the one before.