You guys wouldn't believe what such a simple phrase can do to rip apart a family, all of whose members are Christians!

I have a lot of relatives, and we have had Christmas gift exchanges in the past. Due to the quantity of persons involved, we had always drawn names from a hat to make sure everybody got at least one gift. We also decided on a ballpark figure for the cost of each gift, all in the name of "fairness".

But this year I opened my big mouth and said "Time out! Are we Christians or communists? Here we are turning gift giving into a social engineering project that would make a CPA blush. How can it be possible to give in the true sense of the word, while demanding an even exchange in quantity and quality? Did we give something back to Jesus, or just gratefully accept what we could never earn? To truly give, we'd have to put no restrictions on it, and instead of calling it an exchange, it would just be a time of expressing our appreciation of others as each one felt so moved. In fact, "gift exchange" is turned into an oxymoron when it comes not from the heart but from the checkbook."

My words were twisted beyond recognition. It came back to me as "So Christmas is a time of disappointment and unfairness then! It's a time for the rich to flaunt their wealth by buying expensive gifts, so the poor are made to look less generous!"

I was sorely tempted to point out to the individual making these statements that they had the biggest house on the nicest lot of all the families, so should we all take that as flaunting wealth and making the rest of us feel bad? But I bit my tongue-- which then earned me the reputation of giving everyone the silent treatment.

So I said that, in order to not rain on their parade, I have no intention of participating in further such "exchanges"-- which on top of "the silent treatment" has earned me the title Scrooge. What a mess! And all because I thought we had lost sight of the true meaning of Christmas. It hasn't even arrived yet, and already I feel robbed. I can no longer give anyone a gift without also buying gifts for everyone I'm related to, and they must all be the same price. There are social customs, and then there are bureaucratic nightmares.

All of which proves only that Christians are human, that we are not a bunch of robots that all look and think the same, and that no matter how mixed up we get, we still all agree that God gaves us a priceless Gift. No matter how commercially, legalistically, or selfishly we do it, the fact is that we still remember someone named Jesus who offers salvation as a free gift to anyone who asks. He demands nothing in return, as if a gift could be earned. What we do in response to having accepted salvation is to come not from legalistic outward compliance to a written law, but from a grateful heart.