Why Christmas Should Be About Getting

Around this time every year we hear a lot about giving. This year, I want you to make Christmas about something else.

Getting.

That’s right. I think this year we need to focus more on the getting side of Christmas than we usually do.

The Guilt of Giving

Don’t pretend you don’t feel guilty every, single Christmas. You do. We all do. What do we feel guilty about?

• Not giving great-aunt Sally a gift
• Not giving your mother-in-law the right gift
• Giving your wife fewer gifts than she got you
• Forgetting to give your friend, Bob, a gift…until the exact moment he gives you one

We feel guilty a lot during the Christmas season. And most of the things we feel guilty about have to do with our giving. Have we given the right gifts? The right number of gifts? To the right people? Guilty. Guilty. Guilty.

The Guilt of Getting

But there’s something else we often feel guilty about at Christmas time, and that’s getting.

Don’t you think it’s a little weird that we feel guilty about getting gifts. We think that it’s somehow unspiritual to get a gift. And I suspect that Acts 20:35 has something to do with this guilt: “It is more blessed to give than to receive.”

And comments like this one from Matthew Henry’s commentary on Acts 20:35, for example, don’t help:

The opinion of the children of this world, is contrary to this; they are afraid of giving, unless in hope of getting. Clear gain, is with them the most blessed thing that can be; but Christ tell us what is more blessed, more excellent. It makes us more like to God, who gives to all, and receives from none; and to the Lord Jesus, who went about doing good. This mind was in Christ Jesus, may it be in us also.

Not, of course, that Henry is wrong. Rather, it seems that we have come to view this wrong attitude about receiving as the only possible attitude about receiving. So we feel guilty about it. We say:

• “You shouldn’t have gotten me anything.”
• “You didn’t have to do this.”
• “I hope you didn’t spend a lot on my gift.”

We feel guilty about getting. We think that if we actually enjoy getting things, we might somehow turn into Scrooge himself.

The Joy of Getting

Matthew Henry is right in a sense. It’s true that one way we can image God is by being selfless, giving people. However, there is a part of our being and nature that is meant not to image God, but to do something that God can never do: receive.

Because we are God’s children he treats us like a perfect father would. Part of that is giving gifts to us. And he expects us to receive them with joy and actually enjoy those gifts.

Let me give you an example. My son absolutely loves monster trucks. If I buy him a monster truck toy, wrap it up and give it to him this afternoon, I fully expect his eyes to get as big as basketballs, his mouth to drop wide open and, in his high-pitched 3-year-old voice, to say, “Wow! Thank you, Daddy!” Then he’ll run off to play with it for the rest of the day. He might even ask to take it to bed with him that night.

I think it’s time we translate some of that child-like joy of receiving into our Christmas attitudes. Rather than having a super-spiritual disdain for getting gifts, let’s get excited about getting gifts. In this way we have an opportunity to translate that joy into the greater joy of delighting in God’s gifts to us.

We ought to model to the world around us the joy of getting. John Piper might put it this way: We magnify the greatness of the giver by delighting in receiving his gift; conversely, if we only delight in giving, and not in receiving, then we magnify ourselves  alone.

Just to be clear, Piper didn’t say that (at least I don’t think he did), but it sounds like something he might say.

Delighting in getting–as well as in giving–is one of the unique ways that we can point people to the greatest gift they could ever receive: eternal, abudnandt life through Jesus the Messiah.

So this Christmas, give well and give much. But delight to receive gifts also!