Fruitcakes in Common

While I have been clearly delinquent in my writing, it has not been without reason. We have both been very busy since before Thanksgiving. Some may think that “island time” means that things move at a slower pace, but it seems that there is always something going on in our village. Between several events and meetings with government officials, Michelle and I have been in and out of town much more frequently than we would’ve expected or liked. Nevertheless, as we approach Christmas…our first Christmas in a Fijian village…I felt compelled to write.

It is summer here and 90 degrees Fahrenheit with around 90% humidity, which makes it feel far from Christmastime. Having grown up in coastal Texas, however, these conditions are not unusual to me. I can remember wearing shorts and a t-shirt (and still sweating) the year I got my first bicycle for Christmas. In any event, a “white Christmas” is totally out of the question for us…unless you consider the sand on the beach. Even aside from the cognitive dissonance imposed by the weather, it also doesn’t feel like Christmas in Fiji for another reason. There are no audacious twinkling lights on any of the homes, no inflatable seasonal yard art purchased from Wal-Mart, no images of a fat man in a red suit anywhere, no constant bombardment from every source of media to “BUY, BUY, BUY!”, and, most outstanding, Christmas music has not been playing non-stop on any radio station since before Halloween.

In Fiji, especially in the villages, they truly are focused on the birth of a little Jewish boy 2011 years ago. In Fiji, the Christmas tradition is for families from all over Fiji to come together to catch up on the past year’s events in each other’s lives, tell stories, laugh, play, and, of course, eat lots of food and drink yaqona. In many cases, Fijians save up the entire year on very meager incomes just so they can have enough money to travel to spend time with their families at Christmas. On Christmas Day, it is generally like any other Sunday, with all villagers walking to the church for a special service followed by a big holiday meal. If presents are given, they are usually modest, including crops that were grown, crafts that were made, or fish that were harvested. The mass consumption that is the American holiday tradition is simply not present here…and we are grateful for that.

Along with many Americans, Michelle and I have come to like the Christmas season in the U.S. less and less every year. The nonstop commercialization of the holidays that force-feeds us a message insisting that we buy everything in sight, whether we need it or not (or have the money for it or not!), has drowned out the “Spirit of Christmas” that is love, compassion, charity, kindness, and peace. Somehow, we have turned the simple act of kindness offered by the magi to that little Jewish boy in a manger into a circus of gluttony that is exemplified by stress, greed, debt, and general excess. Despite Charles Schultz’s admonition over 40 years ago in “Merry Christmas, Charlie Brown!”, instead of returning to the true, simple meaning of Christmas, we continue to immerse ourselves further in gross overindulgence like a frat boy at a beer bong.

Some might say, “Oh, you’re just a ‘scrooge’!”, but I’m not. I love the feeling of warmth and comfort I get that comes with the thoughts of brilliantly twinkling lights, the smell of pine from a tree covered with ornaments from my childhood, the taste of my mother’s sugar cookies cut into different Christmas shapes and coated with creamy icing, and the memories of gatherings with family and friends that were filled with laughter. I can remember well the anticipation and excitement as a child of discovering what lie just beneath the boughs of the tree on Christmas morning. As an adult, I can vividly recall the satisfaction and happiness that came with finding the “perfect” gift for one of my family members or my wife. I have, indeed, dropped some serious coin in the past on gifts for my family, particularly when I’ve been traveling overseas. And I honestly and truly enjoy doing that immensely. The thing is, the exorbitant gift giving and materialism that generates it has nothing to do with celebrating Christ’s birth.

This last week, while perusing that massive social experiment that is Facebook, I was struck by a series of comments that seemed to be repeated on several folk’s pages. They usually consisted of something like, “Jesus is the reason for the season” or something to that effect followed by something like, “Gammy got little Jimmy the latest X-box with every game for Christmas and Jim is getting me a new Beamer!”. These folks are also the same ones who imply that there is a “war on Christmas”...and they are absolutely right. There is a war on Christmas, but it has nothing to do with whether a crèche can be displayed on government property…it is waged on the front lines by people just like them.

It seems that increasingly more Americans seem to think that giving, or more importantly receiving, bigger and more expensive gifts along with spending incredible amounts of money on decorations, parties, and, well, things, has something to do with Christ’s message, or worse, that He would want us to behave in this way! The reality is that the more that we make Christmas about the consumption, materialism, and excess, the less it is about the example that Christ lived for us to follow from his birth to his death. All this got me thinking about WWJD, or, more specifically, what Jesus might do if he returned to the U.S. as an ordinary man on Christmas Eve.

He would give comfort and counsel to the young gay man sitting alone and contemplating suicide at the only open diner in town after being ostracized and abandoned by everyone in his own family, just like He comforted the woman at the well. He would volunteer at a soup kitchen feeding the homeless and hungry while one of the line cooks yells from the back, “Hey Eddie, where in the world do all these loaves of bread and fish sticks keep coming from?!?” He would sit and read to a 98-year-old woman in a hospital bed who lived a very private, some would say meek, life in which she never married or bore children, but touched an extraordinary number of people in a way that changed their lives for the better. He would stop at a home for wayward youth and give them all the most valuable gift that he could give at that moment, which also happens to be the one they’ve yearned for most of their lives from an adult…His time.

Given His comments on camels threading needles, my guess is that He would be decidedly unsupportive of the massive amounts of money spent to fuel the beast that Christmas has become rather than spending that money for things such as feeding and clothing the poor, comforting the sick, and finding ways not to further spoil the earth. Moreover, given the rampant consumerism and flagrant waste of resources that Christmas has become in the name of profit, I would suspect that, given the opportunity, He would treat those that promote the current vision of Christmas no different than he did the moneychangers in the temple. Of course, those that want to keep Christmas moving further toward a simplified, idiocratic holiday focused on mass consumption are legion and seem to be winning…at least for now.

Fortunately, the people of Fiji, for the most part, continue to celebrate Christmas in a way that “Jisu” would likely approve through family, fellowship, kindness, and generosity. While we miss our families terribly and wish them a wonderful and warm Christmas, we feel fortunate to be away from the craziness that the holidays have become and to share a simple Christmas with our new Fijian friends that would make Charles Schulz smile. So far Fiji remains relatively untouched by the rampant materialism that is the signature of the American Christmas tradition…except for fruitcake…they’ve got towering stacks of the stuff at all the local markets….and I haven’t seen a single person buy a fruitcake here either!