On average each Canadian will spend about $590 on Christmas gifts this year. Some of those will be great gifts and others - maybe not so much! What’s the worst gift you’ve ever gotten - maybe as a gag gift at a work or family party? Now here’s a harder question - what’s the worst gift you’ve ever GIVEN? Maybe you just ran out of ideas or time and we know at best it was a questionable gift and at worst it was apocalyptically bad!
North Americans spend over 964 billion dollars on Christmas purchases. That's nearly a trillion dollars on stuff — most of which is forgotten by February. While we’ve maybe become experts at giving gifts - somehow we’ve missed the point and lost the art or the Heart of giving.
In this week's Nativity Story our modern Wisemen aarrive at the manger scene expecting to find a mountain of presents under a perfectly lit tree, and instead they find... nothing. Not a single gift for Jesus. They immediately start grumbling about Amazon Prime shipping delays, comparing themselves to their ancient counterparts who carried treasure across the desert without the benefit of GPS or camel-friendly rest stops.
But then Mary — patient, wise Mary — stops their bickering with words that cut through all the noise: "It's Jesus who is the gift... Your hearts, gentlemen. Your hearts."
The original Magi understood something we've forgotten. They didn't travel thousands of dangerous miles to deliver a care package. They came to worship. Their gifts were expressions of recognition, not obligations to fulfill. They saw something the rest of the world missed, and it changed everything about how they lived.
