Vulnerable to Excitement

I was listening to one of those business news shows on NPR this AM, when I heard a startling thing. The report was on why there are no especially compelling toys to buy this year: no "Tickle Me Elmo's" sending parents on searches that can be frantic and retailers on challenges to keep shelves sufficiently stocked.

A comment was made about how there are years when these toys arise and years when they don't, regardless of the economy. But in a time of "economic downturn," the likelihood of such toys catching on is further diminished, was the point. Here's what was said: "When you're thinking about how to spend your money, you're far less vulnerable to fads and excitement."

At first, I felt really sad. I mean, at what other season of the year are we to be "vulnerable to excitement," if not Christmas? Christmas/the Holidays is all about excitement! If the economic problems we are facing, both in our families and in our country, are diminishing our vulnerability to excitement, then these are hard times indeed.

But then I remembered another time in my life, a time when I was unemployed, and very much "between" jobs, and my income was, as we would say now, "extremely limited." Times were not as tough for everyone then as they were for me and my family, but it also was not exactly a time of consumer-confident hysteria. We were living near Chicago, a locale that can be quite bleak at this time of year, the fleeting beauties of a White Christmas made terrifying by the sleeting realities of what happens to transportation when roads are icy.

And Cabbage Patch Dolls were the rage. And my daughter was 7. And because she was "vulnerable to fads," I was.

I remember futile searches of toy store shelves and frantic trips for miles to other, perhaps better stocked neighborhoods, and calling stores and timing visits to shipments and the sheer determination not to disappoint my daughter driving me to great distances. All to no avail.

Then, just as I was settling into the tragic task of preparing my "sorry, sweetheart" Christmas morning speech, word came from up North. My wife and I had a friend in the town were we'd met, Houghton, MI-- a place so far North in the US that a road sign reads, "Houghton, 10 miles; End of the World, 15 miles." Our friend called. He had found a Cabbage Patch Doll! One of the last ones in that Northern outpost of civilization.

It was as if it came from Santa himself! He sent it. It arrived. It turned out to be a "she," and her name, we found out on Christmas morning was "Charity Wilma." Charity Wilma made my daughter's Christmas. Charity Wilma saved me from being the sad father, the disappointing and disappointed dad. Charity Wilma, more than Baby Jesus that year, was our Christmas miracle!

Now, the fact that my daughter, at her mother's the following Spring, left Charity Wilma behind in the playground, so that we never heard from Charity Wilma again... does not take away from the excitement and even joy that Charity Wilma gave to all of us that Christmas: not just to my daughter, but to me and her step-mother and even to our Northern friend and benefactor, who in a real way got to play Santa.

So today, I thought: it is precisely when we have only a few dollars to spend that we want to spend them on something special, something that isn't the last of many gifts under the tree, but something that is THE one and only gift under the tree-- the way Jesus was the only baby in that barn that night. Searching for that Cabbage Patch Doll, gave my Christmas focus and purpose. Knowing the dolls' scarcity, gave value to our finally getting one. Being vulnerable to the excitement meant also being vulnerable to other feelings as well.

Over the years, on other occasions, my daughter got other Cabbage Patch Dolls-- and those she has kept with her. She's told me that she plans to share them with her daughter, and that is a wonderful thing. Charity Wilma, although gone, is not forgotten. Recently I asked my daughter how many Cabbage Patch Dolls she had. She hesitated, like a mother who's had a child die, who then doesn't know how to reply to the question of how many children she has. She said, "if I include Charity Wilma, or not?" I said, include her. She was with us for a time. She was, for a Christmas, our evidence of divine generosity.

And really, isn't this the affirmation we want to make every year, and need especially to make this year: That God is Great and God is Good and now we thank God for God's Giving. Especially when we feel like the world has taken away so much and left us vulnerable to our fears and insecurities, we ought to take comfort from the Christmas message that God's giving is so great, it encourages us to be vulnerable only to excitement and joy.