An excerpt from Garbage Theology by Rev. Caleb Cray Haynes

Have you ever noticed the cans of waste awaiting pick up on the first trash day after Christmas! Each December our landfills are overrun through the celebration of the birth of our Lord. How does any of this make sense? (By the way, buying each other new toys may not be the most appropriate way to celebrate the birth of God Incarnate… somebody had to say it! Feel free to call me the Grinch!)

Since the birth of our girls Emily and I decided that we weren’t going to celebrate Christmas with a bunch of presents. Of course, this was highly problematic at first with gloating grand-parents! But ultimately this “rule” gives way to deeper and richer interactions with one another over the holidays. We dig deeper into Advent and then celebrate all 12 days of Christmas with the children, doing something special each day. Sometimes this may involve a creative gift or two that helps us better engage together as a family, but for the most part it is oriented around shared experiences. It’s a bit of work but it becomes more beautiful each year as we find our own traditions of reflecting on the story of Jesus, spending time together, and serving over the days of Christmas.

A couple of years ago on the 11th day of Christmas, our kids unwrapped a box to discover a first-generation 1985 Nintendo. It was so much fun! Mario and Luigi, Duck Hunt, and little controllers with two red buttons! This was my sister and I’s when we were kids and now watching our girls getting to play with this game is amazing. Naturally, they had no idea what it was, but our kids wouldn’t know an XBOX if they saw one either. A 30-year-old Nintendo is a hit with our six and four-year-old girls (but obviously that could backfire with your teenager).

I can’t help but wonder if, as a culture, we’ve set the bar for gift giving too high. If you are making a direct correlation between how much you spend to how much you love someone… that will always let you down. This truth is also applicable to the quantity or frequency of gifts. If you measure love by how many gifts you give or how frequently you are purchasing something for someone, it will always fall short.

As previously mentioned, our oldest daughter, Story, loves to engage in reclaimed art. For her 7th birthday we secretly saved a giant box full of random parts, pieces and scraps, unveiling it that morning for a fun activity together. For the next two hours we taped and glued it all into an epic castle complete with a flying dragon! Instead of producing more packaging in the landfill, we just decided to have some fun with the packaging we already had! Now, while those castles and crafts have long been recycled, the memories we made will last a lifetime.

One of the pushbacks I’ve heard over the years is “What if my spiritual gift is giving?” or “Giving is my love language!” The truth is there are thousands of ways to give that don’t involve mass amounts of consumption. (Or any at all!) We are only limited by our imaginations. And if you’re anything like me, you’ve got a drawer or a tub under the bed, or a bin in the top of your closet stuffed full of somebody’s love language!

We must be careful that our “giving” doesn’t become our “excuse” to scratch our consumerist itch. If gift-giving really is your thing, then your first task should always be to ask or research what someone might actually want. If you find this difficult, it may prove to be a helpful litmus test to see if you’re giving out of selflessness or selfishness, because both are possible. Sometimes we haven’t done the inner work of deciphering between the two.

Obligation is another reason we sometimes feel trapped into gifting. How many wallets, flashlights, or pocket-knives have you given your dad over the years? I recently overheard a conversation between two people who were frustrated that they never knew what to get their fathers for their birthdays. “If he needs something he just goes out immediately and buys it!” – one sighed. For the other group out there who loathes shopping, maybe it’s time to have a “come to Jesus” talk with your family and friends about the system of giving we trap ourselves in. How might we all have a big DTR around our gift giving, like adults? 

Like the old Nintendo that keeps on giving, the base level question here is, how might we re-frame our values around consumption? Once we’ve located what it is that we value we can work forward from there. Whether that’s a conversation about presents, grocery shopping or looking for a new pair of jeans. If your values are local, organic, earth-friendly, free of palm-oil, free-trade, plastic-free, reclaimed… then put those words at the top of your list. The truth is you do this already, we all do. We all operate out of some set of values, whether those are bent toward loving our world and our neighbors or simply loving ourselves.

What might it be like if we shifted our values in the world from how much money we are saving to how much life we are giving? How might the people of Christ operate out of Christ-like convictions in relation to our planet and our brothers and sisters impacted by our consumption? What if our top determining value and criteria for consumption was love?

Rev Caleb Cray Haynes is the co-pastor at Kaleo Nashville; Co-Organizer for Nazarenes for Creation Care, an author and speaker. Learn more at calebcrayhaynes.com.