Advent Conspiracy

As many of you know, I have been a fan of the Advent Conspiracy since before it had a name. This is a subject that I enjoy talking about and I’m sure that others in the blogging world will follow my lead on this (I might even influence a follower of mine to talk a little about this in her next monthly sermon). *******Oh, before I forget… Today is the first day of December which means Sunday is the first Sunday of the month! Time to meet at the ARC! I’m sure the music will be great.******* Anyway, before I talk about the A.C. (as some of us call it… or maybe I’m the only one who calls it that, I don’t know) I wanted to talk about how things have changed for me over time. When I was a little lad growing up on James Island, things were simple. Santa would give me gifts, my parents would give me gifts, and my brother and sister would give me gifts. I, in turn, would give gifts to my parents and brother and sister (paid for by my parents) and Santa would get cookies. Life, as they say, was good.

Then the family started to grow. My generation got married and had children. My parents stopped paying for the gifts that I gave to others. The cost of Christmas shot up big time (The Wife don’t like cheap gifts). Then the people in charge started changing things. We started drawing names with my Mom’s side of the family to help us decide who we’d exchange gifts with. The only reason I was ok with this is that I was able to fix it so that I was always exchanging gifts with my cousin Louis (that’s right, I fixed the name drawing… don’t judge me). I fought against other ideas, like everyone buying a gift card and then we each draw one out of a hat. I came up with what I still think is a brilliant idea: Everyone buy for the same person (and we rotate who that person is every year). For example, the first year everyone would buy a gift for me. The next year everyone would buy a gift for my brother and so on and so on. This, however, was too perfect to catch on (my brother was the only one I could sell the idea to). I’ve also seen at work (and other places) the idea of everyone buying stupid gifts and then people picking the one they want and someone else “steals” it from them and around and around it goes. Things got to the point with my family that I finally said listen, let’s just all buy for the kids (because you know I love the kids) and not worry about buying for each other. Let our presence be our present to each other. So that’s what we do now.

But what about this whole Advent Conspiracy thing? The concept is simple and can be broken down into four parts: Worship Fully, Spend Less, Give More, and Love All. In other words: Remember what Christmas is all about. You can still give gifts… but don’t give just for the sake of giving something. Don’t go into debt over meaningless stuff that will be forgotten by the end of January (if not before then). Don’t buy a gift because you “have” to. Memories come more from being with each other… not buying stuff for each other. Think about that.