Has your credit been crunched? This period of financial instability and austerity continues to have mixed effects. And Christmas just messes with people’s heads.
I recall watching a news report on the way the crisis is affecting people in our region. In this report a young woman was being interviewed about the very real prospect of having her home repossessed by the bank. Her anxiety was tangible, but never more so than when she raised the immanence of Christmas; “I’m managing to keep up mortgage repayments now,” she said, “but I don’t know what’ll happen when Christmas and all its extra expense comes round.” My heart ached for her, but I must confess my sympathy was directed not at her financial need, but rather her enslavement.
She was on the brink of homelessness, facing the prospect of her family having to move out of the home she loved if she were to default on her mortgage payments. Yet her comments seemed to suggest that extra expense brought about by the Christmas season was inescapable. In her head was what seemed to her to be a genuine dilemma; “Which ‘bill’ shall I pay – the bill for the house or the bill for the Christmas celebrations?”
Clear thinking about her situation shows there is no contest; the mortgage must be paid, and Christmas luxuries can wait – forever if necessary. It would be wrong-headed to put them in the same category as essential household bills. If the young woman truly loves her family, she will surely hold back from spending on turkey and trimmings until she has guaranteed they’ll be able to stay in the house into the New Year; far better to be housed than to have a new flat-screen TV and nowhere to plug it in! Her problem is the strong message being transmitted by the commercial world; “If you love your family you will buy them ….” It’s a lie, but it’s on every street-corner, and it has been carefully set up to resonate with our heartbeat until we begin to believe it and it enslaves us.
It saddens me to see the impact of this lie upon peoples’ lives. The consumerist culture we inhabit is so inhospitable and short of compassion. Market forces feel no sympathy towards the people they lead on, and ultimately their promises of deep satisfaction prove shallow and empty. Christmas comes at a dark time of the year, and commerce, whilst promising light, often ends up adding an extra layer to the darkness we experience.
In light of the current on-going difficulties in the world economy, perhaps now is a good time to re-evaluate the way we celebrate Christmas and give a mind to what is truly important. If we are in any measure simply slaves to the system, it is my prayer that we would be like those mentioned in Isaiah 9:2; “The people walking in darkness have seen a great light.” The good news of Christmas is that in Jesus Christ, his only Son, God has sent us a Saviour to free us from all that entangles and liberate us to be what he always intended us to be. This is something in which we can, surely, confidently invest.