G.K.Chesterton considers the gifts we give ...

A little while ago I saw a statement by Mrs Eddy [Mary Baker Eddy, the founder of Christian Science] on this subject, in which she said that she did not give presents in a gross, sensuous, terrestrial sense, but sat still and thought about Truth and Purity till all her friends were much better for it.

Now I do not say that this plan is either superstitious or impossible, and no doubt it has an economic charm. I say it is un-Christian in the same solid and prosaic sense that playing a tune backwards is unmusical or saying ‘ain’t’ is ungrammatical. I do not know that there is any Scriptural text or Church Council that condemns Mrs Eddy’s theory of Christmas presents: but Christianity condemns it, as soldiering condemns running away. The two attitudes are antagonistic not only in their theology, not only in their thought, but in their state of soul before they ever begin to think. The idea of embodying goodwill – that is, of putting it into a body – is the huge and primal idea of the Incarnation.  A gift of God that can be seen and touched is the whole point of the epigram of the creed. Christ Himself was a Christmas present. The note of material Christmas presents is struck even before He is born in the first movements of the sages and the star. The Three Kings came to Bethlehem bringing gold and frankincense and myrrh. If they had only brought Truth and Purity and Love there would have been no Christian art and no Christian civilisation…

…Christmas presents are a standing protest on behalf of giving as distinct from that mere sharing that modern moralists offer as equivalent or superior. Christmas stands for this superb and sacred paradox: that it is a higher spiritual transaction for Tommy and Molly each to give each other sixpence than for both equally to share a shilling. Christmas is something better than a thing for all; it is a thing for everybody. And if anyone finds such phrases aimless or fantastic, or thinks that the distinction has no existence except in a refinement of words, the only test is that I have indicated already – the permanent test of the populace.  Take any hundred girls from a board school and see whether they do not make a distinction between a flower for each and a garden for all. If therefore new spiritual schools are concerned to prove that they have the spirit and secret of the Christian festival, they must prove it, not by abstract affirmations, but by things that have a special and unmistakable smack, by hitting one pungent tinge of taste, by being able to write a Christmas carol, or even to make a Christmas pie.

G. K. Chesterton, The Theology of Christmas Presents; The Contemporary Review, January 1910 taken from The Secret Christmas: An anthology of the hidden joy of Christmas compiled by Terence Handley MacMath, out now.