Last week my 7-year-old daughter made a sign, “Don’t come in, Luke and Ben!” (Luke and Ben are her brothers), hung it on my door, and disappeared inside my bedroom to wrap Christmas presents, emerging later with several wrapped presents–some for her brothers and her dad and two for her stuffed bunnies. She’d done the same thing earlier that week for birthday parties for her friends, “wrapping” all the gifts she’d picked out in paper shopping bags and stuffing them with tissue paper left over from her own birthday party before I even knew what was happening. I wanted to encourage her to re-wrap the gifts in new gift bags (or at least in gift bags that were meant to be used as gift bags!), but she was so excited and proud of herself I didn’t have the heart to do it.
Then last night I told her we were going to deliver some holiday cookies to a few friends and neighbors, and she dressed up in full elf costume–Santa hat, blinking ornament necklace, warm boots. (She was terribly disappointed I didn’t have any pointy-toed elf boots she could wear.) She loaded all the packages into a red tote “Santa” bag, which she carried up to every door before introducing herself as the elf, her brother Luke as Santa, and me as Rudolph (I was the driver, you see, and lucky to get away without branches strapped to my head for antlers). When we got home, she told me it was the most fun she’d ever had.
I have suspected for some time that gifts was her love language, and now I feel pretty certain of it.
I imagine you’re probably familiar with the love languages. This concept has been running around churches for decades. According to Gary Chapman’s book The Five Love Languages, your love language is the way you give and receive love. The five different types are quality time, physical affection, acts of service, gifts, and words of affirmation.
From the first time I encountered this idea, I remember thinking that “gifts” was a terrible love language! How selfish to want to receive and give gifts, even small ones, to show and receive love. I decided my love language was quality time and left it at that. But in recent years, I’ve been coming around to the realization that if gifts aren’t my primary love language, they rank pretty high for me. Just like my daughter. And that it’s not such a terrible love language to have.
I do like to receive gifts, but I really love to give them, especially at Christmastime. I truly enjoy picking out gifts I think my friends and family would like. I even like wrapping them. I have an app on my phone that helps me track all my Christmas gifts, and I am delighted when it’s time to open it up and start using it.
I certainly agree with the ubiquitous commentary that Christmas has become too materialistic. I don’t think anyone needs to buy a gift for every person they encounter or every relative. And I do not particularly enjoy going to the toy section at Target with my daughter at Christmastime and hearing her extensive and expensive list of all the things she would like to get.
And yet, I’m still going to pick out some gifts for her that I think (I hope) she will like. I’m going to wrap them and put them under the Christmas tree, and I am going to LOVE watching her open them up.
Gifts aren’t all there is to Christmas by any means, but I find them an enjoyable and meaningful part of celebrating Jesus’ birthday. The gifts the wise men brought to Jesus weren’t the most practical gifts ever–they weren’t baby clothes or baby toys or food. The gold, frankincense, and myrrh were extravagant, generous gifts with great significance, gifts that recognized Jesus as holy, Jesus as king. They were gifts those men brought to honor who Jesus was.
I like to talk to my kids about exchanging gifts in honor of Jesus’ birthday, a birthday so special that we all get presents! And I like to try to honor those first gifts by carefully choosing presents that honor the person I am buying for and also by trying to be as generous as I can.
You’re probably familiar with the O. Henry story The Gift of the Magi. In this story, a young wife sells her long hair to buy a chain for her husband’s prize pocket watch, and he sells that same watch to buy her a comb for her beautiful hair. The point of the story isn’t the ultimate futility of their gifts or that they shouldn’t have bothered. To me the story is about generosity and the point is that they were each willing to sacrifice something to make the other happy. I’ve never had to make a sacrifice on that level, but one of the things I appreciate about Christmas gift-giving is the little economies I try to make in order to be able to buy gifts–eating out less, spending less money on myself, even the practice of picking things out for other people that I would really like to receive.
I don’t always succeed at this. I was choosing a present for a friend the other day from my gift shelf (yes, I have a gift shelf!), and I know she loves candles that smell like food. I had a carrot cake scented candle that I thought she would probably like, but I had bought that candle for myself and just put it on my “gift shelf” until I was ready to use it. And because I had chosen some other things for her already, I kept it. Half an hour later at church, our pastor gave a sermon about generosity, and I wanted to run back home and get that candle and give it to her! Instead, I’ve tried to keep that experience in mind as I do the rest of my gift shopping this Christmas season, remembering the feeling of giving someone something they truly like and how much better that is than the feeling I had that day in the pews about my candle still at home on my shelf.
For my daughter, I’ve been trying to encourage her natural generosity by taking her to Target not to expand her own list but to help me choose gifts for the various toy drives all around us this time of year. And letting her decorate her present for her first-grade teacher just how she wanted. After all, who says you can’t have a bow on the bottom of the gift? When she’s older, I look forward to volunteering with her at one of the local “toy stores” where we help military families pick out donated toys for their families, as I have with my sons. I’ll even wear antlers if she really wants me to.
For those of you who love gift-giving and consider gifts your love language, have at it! Enjoy this part of the Christmas season! And for those of you who would rather stick a chopstick in your eye than pick out one more gift, I hear you and I want to remind you that just about everyone I know loves gift cards. 🙂
Merry Christmas!