Holiday gift-giving hollow
without Jesus at center

By Archbishop Charles Chaput, O.F.M. Cap.

One of the many ironies of American life is that as the holidays get more generic and secularized, and the "C word" (Christmas) grows more and more absent from our public vocabulary, the reason for our joy gets blurred.

As one married friend put it: Without Jesus at the center of the holidays, we get all of the calories and none of the flavor, all of the bills and none of the satisfaction. Or in the words of another young parent: The season's credit card debt is now inversely proportional to its happiness.

This year, there's even an odd undercurrent of patriotic duty to buying as many gifts as possible - as if the war effort depended on our Citibank balances.

Obviously, gift giving is a wonderful tradition, Christmas is an appropriate time to be generous, and a lot of good businesses and employees depend on Christmas purchasing to survive. But we should never confuse an activity with the reason for the activity.

Christmas is the celebration of a birthday. It's not finally about things. It's about a person, the person of Jesus Christ. The birth of Jesus - the coming of God as man - is the beginning of our redemption from sin and liberation from death. The joy of the Christian story begins at Christmas and reaches its fulfillment at Easter. At Christmas we celebrate a birth that changed history and reclaimed our destiny. That's something to celebrate. That's the cause of the carols, the decorations and the gifts. And that's why "the holidays" will always seem hollow without Jesus at their center.

It's not too late to seek the real spirit of the season. We can find it, beginning today, by prayerfully living these last 12 days of Advent. The Church gives us Advent - the four Sundays before Christmas - to examine our hearts and prepare to receive Jesus Christ. In fact, Advent points us to all three comings of Christ:

First, it focuses us on His coming at the end of time. Advent encourages us to prepare not only for our personal judgment but also for the last judgment of the world, and to do all we can to convert ourselves and others.

Second, Advent reminds us of Christ's coming to us in the present, through the sacramental life of His Church, in the Scriptures and in personal prayer. It's a time to be sensitive, to have our ears and eyes open to grace. Otherwise, we might miss His coming as so many missed His first coming, especially those who hardened their hearts.

Third and finally, Advent readies us for the Incarnation, God's coming among us in history as a man. It's a time to prepare to more deeply understand and appreciate the wonder of this event so that we can celebrate it with real spiritual joy and enthusiasm on Christmas Day.

The lesson is: If we want a joyous Christmas season, we should live a prayerful Advent. Gifts are important. The reason for the gifts is more important. Real joy is never generic, and we can never manufacture it by buying a lot of things. Joy is always personal. It's always a matter of the heart, not the pocketbook.

And that's the reason Christmas - the day Love Himself took on human flesh -- gives joy in a way "the holidays" never will.