Today I bought some gifts for the "angels" on my parish Angel Tree. An Angel Tree, most often, is an actual tree that has ornaments that list items for needy families. You take an ornament, buy the items and place them under the tree. The parish then gets these gifts to those who needed them.
Yet I wondered as I was standing in line to buy a winter coat why church communities only do this at Christmas. Why not March? August? or even monthly. What is it about Christmas that moves a parish to give gifts to those who need them.
If I were a less cynical soul, I could say it was the over abundance of the spirit of giving that motivated people to give gifts to strangers. Yet, how many of us are actually filled with a spirit of giving? I think it is more that we are saddled with the obligation of giving. Yet, I do not think it is this obligatory need to buy for others that motivates us to take an angel from an Angel Tree.
I think we take those angels because we feel guilty. We feel guilty not because we have more than enough, but because we cannot seem to find the strength to stand up and bring down the system of obligatory giving. We have been tamed to believe that at Christmas we must give to be loved and to be loving. Yet, we also know, deep down inside, that this belief is a lie. If we did not know, we would not buy gifts for strangers; strangers that we cannot love and who cannot give us love in return.
Angel trees allow us to give for no other reason than giving. We know this and hope that even one act of authentic giving can somehow compensate for our weakness in the face of a capitalist machine that has figured out how to commodify love.
