No Gifts!

No gifts.

This holiday season, I've decided to release people from the burden of giving me gifts. Gifts should not be an obstacle to celebrating the season of giving. Rather, gifts should represent freedom from the cheerless sense of duty that our trying circumstances have compelled us to endure. With all that we as a people have suffered this year, we deserve to celebrate more than just our resilience, or our capacity for self-sacrifice.

We deserve to celebrate what this season, to some extent, is all about: how the entirety of Christendom came about when a child was born.

This holiday season, if you can, try to avoid giving me gifts. Instead, celebrate with the joyful abandon of one to whom the economic cost of Christmas is no longer a burden, but a distant memory. And perhaps recall how by celebrating in joy, we allow ourselves, much like Mary and Joseph and a significant representation of the domesticated animals commonly associated with humble beginnings, to be surprised by sanctity.

Many thanks!