In my previous post “Are You Looking at My Boughs!?.”  https://www.juliemahan.com/2015/11/23/are-you-looking-at-my-boughs/ I mentioned that I asked a male and female questions regarding their Christmas celebration experiences. I touched on the female’s in that post, so I will capture the male’s answer here.

Just like the female, my fella said that the first word he thought of regarding Christmas was “stress.” And before, I could ask another question, he added, “When you grow up poor, nobody likes Christmas.” He said that being the seventh child out of eight siblings that he really didn’t remember ever getting much of anything for Christmas. He saw the financial burden it put on his father, who was the sole provider for the family. And the stress he went through knowing he couldn’t give his children the gifts they wanted, or the things they needed. His parents often bickered about the upcoming holiday regarding the cost of gifts and food.

Now as an adult father and grandfather himself, he finds that he works more hours or extra duties so that his family has enough gifts and food at Christmas. However, his past has stolen his joy in giving and receiving. He said that the financial stress doesn’t leave even when you aren’t poor. There were years he and his wife had huge credit card debt due to her trying to make up for his lack of Christmas joy. He ended by saying that all the financial and materialistic expectations bring stress and that truly puts the “heck” in deck the halls.

As I sit’n’sip, pondering the answer that this fella gave me I feel, I can definitely relate. Recalling all of our past financial shortcomings during the gift giving season, I especially remember one. It was the year that I had used poor math in balancing the check book, leaving us short in December. We were not poor, but in spite of the arithmetic mistake we were just poor stewards of our earnings. We lived paycheck to paycheck. Being the one left to manage the finances, I often found myself borrowing from Peter to pay Paul. I regret that I never set aside a Christmas fund and so I experienced great stress every year at Christmas.  And while we tried to keep our attention and the attention of our children’s on celebrating the birth of Jesus, the mounded financial stress and materialism living inside us, put us through “heck”.

I wonder my friend what your answer would be. What is the one word you’d choose to describe Christmas?

Please join me….let’s make each year more about Jesus and less about gifts, and each year gaining wisdom and discipline regarding our finances.

“Father, you gave us the ultimate gift….without stress, but willingly, lovingly and costing you more than we could ever imagine. We praise you and thank you Lord for the birth of Jesus. Open our eyes to the ways that we put ourselves through hell, not just at Christmas but the whole year through. Give us strength and wisdom to change those ways aligning with your will for us. In Jesus blessed name, Amen.”