Gift-giving

‘Opening their treasure chests, they offered him gifts of gold, frankincense and myrrh’  Matthew 2:11

'Tis the season to be jolly', says the carol, but the weeks leading up to Christmas can also be a season of futile anxiety, as we try to remember all the people for whom we intend to buy presents and then worry whether what we've got them is appropriate (or whether they've got one already). Giving presents is just about the main feature of a modern Christmas, and is probably the chief reason why our credit card account looks shocking in January.

There is, however, good reason for giving gifts to each other at Christmas, and it's connected both with the words from Matthew's Gospel above, and also with the precedent of St Nicholas, whose feast day falls on 6 December.
The facts about him are obscured by dodgy history and dubious legend, but he was probably a bishop in the near East, at a place called Myra, in the fourth century. 

Unable to give the child Jesus a present on his birthday, postal services to the right hand of the majesty on high being unreliable, he felt it would be appropriate to give gifts in Christ's name to the poor children of his town. So he went from house to house, it is said, leaving presents for the children. When dad - or mum - do the same nowadays they are following the example of St Nicholas, and if they put on the traditional Santa Claus (St Nicholas) outfit, then they are donning a version of the red robes and mitre of a bishop.

To give gifts to others fits in with the teaching of Jesus in another way, in that he said that if we do it 'to the least of these my brethren' we do it to him. We give gifts to others because we can't give them to him. In any case they are but a small response to God's most generous gift of all, his Son to be our Saviour.

In fact, as Christina Rossetti puts it in her Christmas hymn, I can give Jesus a gift at Chistmas (or any other time): What I have, I give him - Give my heart.

Canon David Winter is a former Diocesan Director of Evangelism, a broadcaster and author of many books including Message for the Millennium (BRF).