Each week of Advent I am beginning with one of the signs of that Christmas is soon to arrive. This week we note that the Thanksgiving holiday that begins with gratitude and then turns into Black Friday (and now Cyber Monday) announce the arrival of Advent, perhaps more starkly than John the Baptist's arrival on the scene. As we go through Advent, I hope you will think about the signs in your holiday experiences that point to Christmas for you and give it shape and meaning.
For background to this sermon series, I read Hank Stuever's book Tinsel, which chronicles the lives of three people (and their families and friends) as they prepare for Christmas in 2006 in Frisco, Texas.
Tinesel, by Hank Stuever, comments on Thanksgiving: "If not for Independence Day, it [Thanksgiving] would be the last of the pure holidays, replete with the remaining vestiges of Norman Rockwell advertising and mad-rushes of grocery spending. Slathered in upbeat, revisionist history (cheerful natives, robust colonists), Thanksgiving happily sidesteps the hyperactive retail machine and instead stakes its claim on reverence, retaining its aura of handmade construction-paper Pilgrim hats. it conveys a sense of national togetherness, gluttonous helping of iconic food items, and the moments we take to consider our blessings. Then all hell breaks loose" (78)
2006 begins to break the protocol of Black Friday by opening at midnight. People begin getting in line on Thursday afternoon.
Stuever notes that Americans end of spending half a trillion dollars in 2006 (Tinsel, 3). Figures I can find indicate 600 million in 2013 - 700 million in 2014, including Kwanza and Hanukkah (https://nrf.com/news/the-long-and-short-of-americas-consumer-holidays; and http://theeconomiccollapseblog.com/archives/guess-how-much-americans-plan-to-spend-on-christmas-and-halloween-this-year)
We have an infant baptism on Sunday morning. As I was reflecting on giving gifts, I wondered if there were any gift we could give a child that would matter more to them than being united with Christ in both Christ's death and resurrection and the commitment of a church community to help raise the child in the faith. That gift costs us nothing in real dollars, but it impacts the child forever.
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