A Child is Born!...Continued from page 2

I came across an article entitled “Save Us From Christmas Spending.” I learned that the average credit card indebtedness in the United States is more than $10,000.00. We really do spend too much. The American Research Group notes that the average spending per person this year will be down about four percent from last year – from $942.00 to $907.00. I’m glad it is down, but that is still a lot of money to spend on each person for whom you buy. At my house that would mean me spending $2,721.00 – and that doesn’t include our dog, Kiwi. Not going to happen!

Have you heard about the group called SCROOGE? SCROOGE stands for “The Society to Curtail Ridiculous Outrageous and Ostentatious Gift Exchanges.” Founded in 1979 by Chuck Langham of Charlottesville, Va., SCROOGE focuses on how nobody seems to go overboard with any other holiday. A couple of nice gifts just aren’t enough. You are encouraged, even made to feel guilty, if you don’t spend hundreds of dollars on each person for whom you buy.  

SCROOGE encourages Christmas shoppers to spend no more than one percent of their gross annual income. If one makes $50,000.00, one only spends $500.00. SCROOGE doesn’t want to hurt businesses; they just want sensibility. As you can imagine, studies indicate that an overwhelming majority of folk are opposed to SCROOGE.  Spend! Spend! Spend! Want! Want! Want! Get! Get! Get!

It is tragic that many of us have no desire to be like Reggie, that little boy in the movie The Kid Who Loved Christmas, who only wanted to be with his daddy on Christmas. A clearer picture of who we may be and what our desires may be is revealed in three comic strips.  

The first depicts another little boy, unlike Reggie, on Christmas morning. With his mother and father standing next to the Christmas tree in their robes looking like mommies and daddies look when they first get up in the mornings, he is sitting in the floor in a sea of toys including boats, drums, a bicycle, trucks, cars, an electric train, a chemistry set, a guitar, a baseball glove and bat, a basketball, a bow and arrows, an airplane, and a crane. After opening everything, which obviously was for him, he looks up at his mom and dad and rather disgustedly says, “Santa forgot some things. How many days until my birthday?”

The second cartoon shows Santa Claus holding his leg, obviously in pain, after a kid kicked him in the shin. The caption from the kid reads, “That’s for last year!”

Then there is the third comic. On one side of the cartoon, Santa is sitting in his chair holding a little guy who points to the toy section of the store. The caption reads: “We could save ourselves a lot of time and energy if you’ll just follow me over to that toy store and get me the stuff I want right now.”

We want too much of the wrong thing and not enough of the right thing. We get angry when we don’t get what we want or think we deserve. And we are prone to take shortcuts and thus get what we want. All of this is representative of the wrong thing.  We’ve simply not come to realize that the wrong thing will not last forever. The right thing does.