The Consumer and Christmas

I was reading Ann's excellent post over at What Is Your Only Comfort? blog on Christmas consumerism, and felt the pangs of good old Calvinist guilt. Which is a special kind of guilt only Calvinists can experience. You see, according to certain theories of economic development, Calvinism was instrumental in fostering the nascent capitalism of the Renaissance. So when I purchase things, I help the economy, keep people employed, and enjoy the blessing of God's good earth. But then I hear that consumerism is a bad thing. It depletes our environmental resources, it denudes our land with rising trash levels and pollution, and it increases one's worldliness and lack of dependence upon God. All of this comes to an exquisite, agonizing point somewhere between Thanksgiving and Christmas. If I remain a dedicated consumer, I uphold my Calvinistic mercantile heritage, but I feel guilty over the economic exploitation of Jesus. If I refrain from gift-giving, I annoy my relations, violate the American economic religious commandment of "Thou canst not have enough," and risk being tarred and feathered as a humbug, a kill-joy, etc. This is the double guilt of the Calvinist at Christmas. The bottom line: you can't win.

Which reminds me of a famous quote by Marx and Engels from the Communist Manifesto. "All that is solid melts into air, all that is holy is profaned, and man is at last compelled to face with his sober senses his real conditions of life and his relations with his kind." What would those conditions be Herr Marx? He sums up the modern world with great prescience: "The need of a constantly expanding market for its products chases the bourgeoisie over the whole surface of the globe. It must nestle everywhere, settle everywhere, establish connections everywhere. The bourgeoisie has through its exploitation of the world market given a cosmopolitan character to production and consumption in every country...It compels all nations, on pain of extinction, to adopt the bourgeois mode of production; it compels them to introduce what it calls civilisation into their midst, i.e., to become bourgeois themselves. In a word, it creates a world after its own image."

That's a pretty accurate description of our society, amazingly written in 1848! I've seen wristbands and bumper-stickers asking, What Would Jesus Do? What Would Jesus Drive?, but maybe we should be asking, What Would Jesus Say About Consumerism? or What Would Jesus Do at Christmas? Oh I forgot, he already gave us the answer to the first question in the gospels. "Do not store up for yourselves treasure on earth" (Mt 6:19). "You cannot serve God and wealth [Greek: "mammon"]. "How hard it is for those who have wealth to enter the kingdom of God!" (Luke 18:24). As for the second question, perhaps Jesus would say to us, "Give what you were going to spend this Christmas to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven" (adapted from Luke 18:22).

Is consumerism the natural result of capitalism, or is it a perversion of capitalism? Since Marx and Engels' secular experiment in communal sharing was such a spectacular failure, is there room for a Christian influenced capitalism? And why do we always ask these questions at this time of the year, instead in July? Perhaps it is because we feel uneasy being wealthy, and celebrating the birth of Jesus by giving other wealthy persons things they probably don't need. What they do need is God, and yet we feel too awkward to mention Him at this time of year. Besides, you can't mention Jesus in Target any more. Happy Holidays!