I really like stuff. Always have. I’m a natural-born materialist. That tendency is one of my biggest spiritual struggles: being content and relinquishing the impulse to consume, to have more. And I’d like to talk a bit about that tendency today, especially as it relates to Thanksgiving … and the day of materialistic bingeing that follows it.
Growing up, one of my favorite times of the year was when the annual JCPenney Christmas catalog arrived at each of my grandmothers’ houses. (I’m not sure why our family never got one; I thought it was just something grandmas got.) Each fall, I’d spend delicious, idle hours at their houses, circling the toys I wanted and gazing at them longingly. Once I’d honed in on what I had to have, I’d look at the pictures of happy children playing with those toys and imagine my own exquisite joy once I had the objects of my affection in my clutches.
My Grandma Roberts (who’s long since passed on to her great reward), was always dutiful to get me exactly what I wanted. She was equally dutiful in her Christmas shopping discipline, often having it done before Halloween. Some years, her artificial Christmas tree would go up in early November, with presents already wrapped and waiting … with nearly two months of agonizing, tantalizing waiting to go.
These days, I’m deeply cognizant of the fact that marketers have more means than ever to stoke our appetites for stuff. They’re no longer limited to antiquated and anachronistic Christmas catalogs. Myriad television channels, combined with so many other screens (smartphones, tablets, computers, etc.), give them the ability to tempt us with a functionally infinite “catalog” of stuff. They know what sites we’ve visited, what we’ve looked at, what we’ve longed for. And as we keep surfing the web, targeted ads magically appear, reminding us, “You wanted this, didn’t you?”
I still harbor some of the avaricious tendencies I had as a child. And as my own children are now in the crosshairs of marketers’ clever and compelling modes of materialistic enticement, I’m more aware than ever of American consumer culture’s one-word mission statement: more.
So how do we combat it?
I believe (or, perhaps I should say I want to believe) that Thanksgiving offers us an annual, built-in speed brake for all those consumptive tendencies. Now, I realize that with Black Friday following close on Turkey Day’s talons, it might seem as if the holiday is more likely a nitrous oxide accelerant for those materialistic impulses … and it certainly can be.
But Thanksgiving was intended as a day to stop and remember the good things God has graciously given us already, not one to spend pining for the many more things that perpetually promise even greater happiness. Instead, it’s a day to express gratitude and to rest contentedly in the goodness of God’s providential provision for our needs.
Increasingly, though, it seems like contentment and gratitude are countercultural states of mind and soul. They require deliberate cultivation, because there are precious few voices in our culture encouraging us not to chase the dragon of materialism. In our culture of more, more, more, if we want to be thankful and live without consumptive compulsion, we have to carve out space to reflect deliberately on the many blessings God’s already bestowed and ask Him to help us remember that we don’t really need to get any more “stuffed” than we already are.
So this Thanksgiving, I’d encourage you to take some time, either by yourself or with your family and friends, to focus on the ways God’s blessed you this year. Say them out loud. Write them down in a journal. Or tell Him in prayer. Then ask Him to help you keep carving out time throughout the year to become a person (and, where applicable, a family) who’s growing in contentment as you strive to say thank you for what you already have.
If we can do that, maybe, just maybe, it’ll help you and me both to loosen our grip on the longings for everything we don’t have … and to remember what matters most: our relationships with God, family and friends.
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