At the end of each year, we gather together for two great celebrations of abundance. Thanksgiving pulls us into warm kitchens and crowded dining rooms. We are enveloped in the fragrances of roasting turkey and butter and spice and Aunt Emily's floral perfume. Plates are passed, seconds are insisted upon, and our gratitude for having enough food becomes something worth lingering over. Christmas spills warmth and light into the darkest, coldest nights of the year. It transforms ordinary rooms into magic, bright with twinkle lights and evergreen branches, resonant with nostalgic and joyful music, and graced with wrapped gifts waiting under a tree.
Thanksgiving is abundance received, a table filled to overflowing with food and with those we love. Christmas is abundance given, light, warmth, and generosity shared outward with the people we love and people we don't know but still love. In the face of winter's death, both holidays aver that life is good, provision is real, and grace takes tangible form.
Above all, Christmas delights in gifts — small and large tokens of love passed from hand to hand, from change in the Salvation Army pot to the Big Present on Christmas that makes the kids dance with delight. These gifts are meant to flow from the abundance accumulated over the year: from work done, resources stewarded, creativity exercised, and care taken. They are the visible overflow of a year that held enough.
But in the bustle of the season, it is easy to lose sight of what we are celebrating. Christmas is, first and foremost, of course, the celebration of the birth of Christ and the redemption of the world. It is also a celebration of love, our desire to express care for one another in tangible ways. This is especially true with children. Wanting Christmas morning to feel magical is natural. The modern consumer world eagerly reinforces that instinct, surrounding us with gift guides, curated lists, and merchandise engineered to sparkle just enough to suggest that one more thing will make the holiday complete. The pressure is subtle but constant: spend a little more, upgrade, don’t disappoint.
So if Christmas is a celebration of abundance, what does it mean to finance it with debt? Celebrating abundance with borrowed money is not celebration at all. It is denial, staging generosity on credit and calling it joy. Let me be clear here: this is not a budgeting lecture or a financial purity test. It is a question of meaning. Gifts are meant to be tokens of love, freely given, not props for display or reassurance. When debt enters the ritual, the reason for giving is cracked and distorted.
Credit and Christmas Giving
Using credit quietly shifts Christmas giving from generosity to performance. The question moves from what would delight this person? to what will look right under the tree? Credit makes appearances easier to manage, but it empties the gift of substance. A real gift carries something of the giver: thought, attention, restraint, love. A gift bought on credit carries an obligation deferred.
Debt distorts our understanding of abundance itself. Christmas assumes abundance exists. Credit imitates abundance without requiring stewardship. Over time, this teaches families, especially children, to associate celebration with spending rather than gratitude, and generosity with consumption rather than care.
It encourages substitution: objects for presence. When spending feels elastic, it becomes easier to compensate for stress, exhaustion, or distance with larger or more impressive gifts. But gifts are symbols of relationship, not replacements for it. When the price tag grows while connection thins, the symbol collapses.
Debt poisons the spiritual atmosphere of the season. Christmas is meant to be a time of anticipation and peace and joy, a reminder that light has entered the world. Debt drags anxiety into that space, turning generosity into pressure and joy into recovery. The shadow of January’s bill teaches the soul to brace rather than rejoice.
And credit trains us to obey urgency rather than wisdom. Retail thrives on false deadlines and manufactured panic. Credit smooths the path: buy now, think later. But Christmas is rooted in waiting — in preparation, restraint, and reflection. When urgency governs our giving, the discipline of Advent gives way to the frenzy of a sale.
Thoughtful Gifts and Real Generosity
The answer is not less Christmas, but truer Christmas. Giving well does not require debt; it requires intention. Gifts should be thoughtful signs that we see and know the person receiving them. A designer bag is unnecessary if a well-made backpack fits someone’s life better. Something crafted locally, chosen with care, carries more meaning than a luxury logo. A good gift does not announce its price. It quietly says, you were known.
Christmas giving is not a competition to deliver the most impressive present. It is the sharing of a token of love. That is why the best gifts are often simple or playful. This year, I’m giving one brother, a retired artilleryman, a miniature working cannon that functions on gunpowder; I hope he doesn't shoot his eye out! My other brother, a devoted model-train enthusiast, is getting a small cow figurine being abducted by a UFO complete with lights and sound effects. Neither gift is expensive. Both are perfect. They will make my brothers laugh, and they will say something far more important than I spent money: they will say I thought about you.
The real danger at Christmas is not overspending in the abstract, but losing sight of what we are celebrating. Going into debt for Christmas is not merely impractical; it betrays the spirit of the season. Christmas abundance was never meant to be staged or financed. It was meant to be real, love given freely, thoughtfully, and honestly, from what we truly have.
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