Hacking Your Way Through Holiday Returns
Twice a month, the Crackers & Grape Juice team publishes a newsletter. Crackers & Grape Juice + is a membership site with a bi-monthly newsletter and secret podcast. You can’t find this podcast on iTunes or Spotify (although we can help you add the feed to your podcast player). Here’s my offering for the latest issue, “Deviants, Mary, Sufjan, and Returns.”
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In just a few days many will rip open gifts they have been longing to receive. Maybe it’s the missing album from your Sufjan Stevens collection. Or, perhaps a new knit hat to keep your bald head warm in the winter months. Either way, many will be receiving gits they cannot imagine living without.
Earlier this month I received my monthly shipment from Dollar Shave Club. No, I' haven’t shaved my beard, but I did need some hair product. With each order, you receive the Bathroom Minutes. The latest issue featured an older article titled, “The Gentleman’s Guide to Returning a Present You Hate.”
Give good gifts yourself
Receive gifts graciously
Returning
Consider regifting
As a kid, I can remember running down the stairs to open gifts. Never once did I think that I’d want to return something that had been given to me. The idea of returning a gift I didn’t want, or worse, regifting, didn’t enter my mind until I was an adult. I’d imagine the same is true for you as well.
At Christmas, the inbreaking of God’s grace in the form of a child up-ended the world. While shepherds, magi, cows, and even the child’s parents may not have known the full implications of what had happened, the world would never be the same. The simple gift from God at Christmas was offered to the world, and well, the hard truth, is within a short amount of time the holy family was on the run because there were some (Herod of Antipas) who did not want this gift. The gift of God in Christ threatened the world many had made for themselves.
We’re not all Herod (though, I bet you can think of a few people right now). Many welcome the gift of Christmas each year, recalling the in-breaking of God’s grace in Christ without a thought of returning or regifting. Yet this time of year, subtly, each of us looks beyond the manger and thinks we either do not need the gift given to us or that we are unworthy of the gift. We don’t need what God has offered us, we’re good on our own or worse, haven’t done x-y-z to earn the gift.
Other than having amazing parents, my kids have done nothing to earn the gifts they’ll receive this Christmas. God isn’t a jolly fat guy in a red-suit keeping a list of who is deserving or undeserving of the gift of the incarnation. We’re all undeserving. We’ve all fallen short of the glory of God and still, Christmas happened. Christ arrived in a manger. And Christ promises to come again.
Christmas is a reminder to us that not only are we worthy of the gift given to us by God in Christ but at the very same time the gift is ours whether we realize how much we need it. The grace of God in Christ is a precious gift, and, by the grace of God, a gift we can’t return. But it is a gift we can share.