This is a speech I’m giving on Christmas Eve at our church… thought I’d share it. 
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Hi. My name is Jennifer….and I have a Christmas Confession to make. I love presents. I do love giving them. But that’s not what I’m talking about. I love GETTING them. I do. I get really excited about it. It started very young…after all, my mom is the black-belt ninja of gift-giving. The way that woman can stuff a stocking is not to be believed. Every year she might stress herself to pieces and threaten to call of Christmas and go to Mexico, she might be frazzled and frayed…but oh the magic that she made! So can you blame me that I learned early on that it was FUN to get presents? I was a pain about it sometimes too. I remember one year when I made up my mind that I wanted an electric keyboard… I *had* to have that keyboard. I would put circulars all over the fridge with the keyboards circled and arrows… I walked around singing “I’ll have a blue Christmas without a keyboard…I’ll be so blue..thinking about a keyboard.” Amazingly, not only did my parents not strangle me…they did give me the keyboard. They love me. ;D
But I’m all grown up now…in theory anyway…and grown-ups aren’t supposed to admit to being excited about *getting* their presents. We’re supposed to know that Christmas is about GIVING…and we’re supposed to be excited about that.
And giving is a lot of fun. People who know me well know I love to give gifts. Finding that right thing that will make the recipient’s eyes light up and say “WOW!”….it’s a rush like no other. But you know…it’s hard to be excited about giving when no one wants to admit they like *getting*. How many times have you had some one fight you on a gift? “Oh…you shouldn’t have” “Oh..but..but I didn’t get *you* anything” or worst of all “I can’t accept that”
When we do not graciously accept the gifts people want to give us, be that a gift of praise, service, or something material… we deny them the blessing of giving. We might feel like we’re being unselfish, but are we really? To deny someone the chance to give to us, or serve us…because *we* want to feel like givers ourselves… is that really unselfish? I’ve been pondering this for several years…precisely because I *do* love giving gifts, and because I have had to get downright obnoxious on occasion with friends who all but flat-out refused to take them! When you get to the point of saying “look! I bought you this gift because I WANTED TO because you are special to me. Now SHUT UP and take it!” You don’t feel all that Christmasy anymore, y’know?! And then I came across this essay “The God We Hardly Knew” by William Willimon… I’d like to share some of it with you. (the below is edited for my speech. You can read the complete essay here)
Probably most of us have had the experience of receiving, right out of the blue, a gift from someone we really don’t know all that well. And, perhaps, to our consternation, the gift turns out to be nice, something that we didn’t know we wanted and certainly didn’t ask for, but there it is, a good gift from someone who is not really a good friend.
Now, what is the first thing we do in response?Right. We try to come up with a gift to give in return — not out of gratitude (after all, we didn’t ask for it) or out of friendship (after all, we hardly even know this person) , but because we don’t want to feel guilty.
We don’t want to be indebted. The gift seems to lay a claim upon us, especially since it has come from someone we barely know. This is uncomfortable; it’s hard to look the person in the face until we have reciprocated. By giving us a gift, this person has power over us.
It may well be, as Jesus says, more blessed to give than to receive. But it is more difficult to receive. Watch how people blush when given a compliment. Watch what you do when your teen-aged son comes home with a very expensive Christmas present from a girl he has dated only twice. “Now you take that expensive sweater right back and tell her that your parents won’t allow you to accept it. Every gift comes with a claim and you’re not ready for her claim upon you.” In a society that makes strangers of us all, it is interesting what we do when a stranger gives us a gift.
And consider what we do at Christmas, the so-called season of giving. We enjoy thinking of ourselves as basically generous, benevolent, giving people. That’s one reason why everyone, even the nominally religious, loves Christmas. Christmas is a season to celebrate our alleged generosity. The newspaper keeps us posted on how many needy families we have adopted. The Salvation Army kettles enable us to be generous while buying groceries (for ourselves) or gifts (for our families). People we work with who usually balk at the collection to pay for the morning coffee fall over themselves soliciting funds “to make Christmas” for some family.
We love Christmas because, as we say, Christmas brings out the best in us. Everyone gives on Christmas, even the stingiest among us, even the Ebenezer Scrooges. Charles Dickens’s story of Scrooge’s transformation has probably done more to form our notions of Christmas than St. Luke’s story of the manger. Whereas Luke tells of God’s gift to us, Dickens tells us how we can give to others. A Christmas Carol is more congenial to our favorite images of ourselves. Dickens suggests that down deep, even the worst of us can become generous, giving people.
Yet I suggest that we are better givers than getters, not because we are generous people but because we are proud, arrogant people. The Christmas story — the one according to Luke not Dickens — is not about how blessed it is to be givers but about how essential it is to see ourselves as receivers.
We prefer to think of ourselves as givers — powerful, competent, self-sufficient, capable people whose goodness motivates us to employ some of our power, competence and gifts to benefit the less fortunate. Which is a direct contradiction of the biblical account of the first Christmas. There we are portrayed not as the givers we wish we were but as the receivers we are. Luke and Matthew go to great lengths to demonstrate that we — with our power, generosity, competence and capabilities — had little to do with God’s work in Jesus. God wanted to do something for us so strange, so utterly beyond the bounds of human imagination, so foreign to human projection, that God had to resort to angels, pregnant virgins and stars in the sky to get it done. We didn’t think of it, understand it or approve it. All we could do, at Bethlehem, was receive it. A gift from a God we hardly even knew.
It’s tough to be on the receiving end of love, God’s or anybody else’s. It requires that we see our lives not as our possessions, but as gifts.
About four years ago, our first Christmas in this church, during Cantata weekend, our family was given a tremendous gift. We had started our second son Andrew in drum lessons with Eric Boseman a few months earlier… Andrew is, in all honesty, quite the drum prodigy, and we wanted him to have the best start. That would be Eric. But at Christmas, Eric came to me with a surprising announcement. He told me that *someone* wanted to pay for our son to take drum lessons… so now Daniel could come to lessons too. Daniel, to that point, hadn’t shown a lot of musical interest. He was taking piano and doing pretty well, but he wasn’t thrilled by it. And he hadn’t shown any aptitude for the drums. Frankly, with two boys in piano and another in drums..we really didn’t think we could afford any more music lessons anyway. But here was this anonymous gift…so…why not?
Daniel started drum lessons. After a few months, we realized he too had a talent waiting to be developed. Many of you saw the two of them in the Cantata a few weeks ago…they rock! Not only that, but as time went on his relationship with Andrew began to improve because they finally had something in common. Then I looked to the two of them and realized that maybe I could do it too…and now I’ve learned drumming and percussion and it’s something we can do as family. I can’t begin to describe the long-lasting impact that gift has had on our family…and it goes far beyond just drumming. We can NEVER repay this gift. I didn’t ask for it. I didn’t know we needed it. And I have NO clue who gave it to us. All I could do when it was given is accept it. All I can do now is be thankful and make sure we continue on with the blessing that gift has been.
Our lives are gifts. Given to us by the giver of all good things. And Christmas at its very heart..at the starlit center of that first Silent Night..is not about what we give to each other or even what we can give to God. Christmas is about what HE gave and still gives to us. Unlike human gift giving, we can not even attempt to match His gift. All we can really do is humble ourselves and receive a gift we can never, never, never repay. And yes. We *are* indebted. There’s just no way around it. But Christmas is the time to remember that God says to us “I know I didn’t have to. I know you didn’t get me anything. I gave you this because I *wanted* to. Because I LOVE YOU. Now shut up and take your gift”
Just accept it. Be thankful. And continue on in the blessing that has been given. Merry Christmas.