In the heart of Haughville on the corner of North Holmes Avenue & West St. Clair Street on the near westside of Indianapolis, Indiana.

Every year during the month of December the Church celebrates the four-week season of Advent, preparing for the coming of Christ at Christmas.  Liturgical celebrations are typically quiet, austere, and penitential, with music that is somber and filled with deep longing for the Lord Emmanuel to come and bring His light into our dark world.  Homilists often lament that this beautiful season is virtually drowned out by the noise and excitement of our commercial Christmas season.  Long before Advent even begins, our shopping malls are already bedecked with Christmas trees, holiday merchandise, and department store Santas.  Even our neighborhoods glow with colored lights and our homes are filled with the strains of Christmas music.

It is true that all this commercialism and materialistic preoccupation can cause us to lose sight of the reason for the season – the birth of our Savior.  But for me there is something about the frenetic pursuit to shop for just the right gift for those we love that I personally find inspiring, hopeful, and fundamentally Christian.  Of all the things we do at Christmas – family feasts, office parties, traveling home for the holidays, singing Christmas carols, going to church together as a family – our most consistent trait is that of “sharing gifts”.

To me “sharing gifts” is very much at the heart of what the Advent of Christ and Christmas are all about.  Certainly the sharing of a gift with someone can be a sign that we wish to share our very self.  Oh, sure!  Sometimes gift sharing becomes perfunctory – something that is socially expected, and for that reason perhaps even a burden.  And for those receiving gifts, perhaps the focus can be too much on the gift and not enough on the giver.  But for most of us a gift is an outward sign of our love:  a token to say “I give you my heart!” … “I am here for you!” … “You mean everything to me!” 

The sharing of gifts at Christmas reminds me of God our Father who loved us so much that He gave us the greatest gift of all, His Only Son – indeed, His very self.  And have you noticed how gift-giving at Christmas is often so lavish?  In my childhood memories of Christmas, it seemed that there was always a mountain of colorfully wrapped Christmas gifts and toys under the Christmas tree just waiting to be attacked by us kids.  As we became adults, this season inspired in us a desire to share our abundance with others, especially the poor and those in need.  These memories of Christmas abundance and generous reaching out beyond ourselves, remind me of the lavishness of God’s love for us.

May this season of sharing fill the hearts of each of us with gratitude to God for His abundant blessings, and especially for the gift of His Son Jesus.  And as we share gifts with one another and the poor, may we also not fail to share something of our selves as well – our time, a conversation, our friendship.  And finally, may we be aware that in sharing of ourselves, we reveal to each other the face of the loving God, the Giver of all good gifts.  As we begin a new year, may this spirit of gift-sharing become increasingly a part of the fabric of our lives.

God bless!

Ed Johnson