I ran a few last-minute Christmas errands this week, and everywhere I went, consumption was on full display.
Shoppers maneuvered carts stacked high with boxes and shopping bags. At one checkout, a woman held up the line while buying nearly $2,000 in gift cards. Children shouted their demands. Parents snapped back. Aisles were packed with towering displays of brightly colored, low-quality merchandise—plastic novelties produced overseas, destined to lose their appeal or break within weeks before ending up as waste.
Christmas, it seems, has become a festival of buying.
As I stood there watching the chaos, I was reminded of something my stepmother often says when people talk about Corpus Christi, Texas. “There’s a lot of corpus,” she jokes, “and not much Christi.”
The phrase echoed in my mind as the frenzy continued. There is plenty of Christmas—but very little Christ.
When we pause to remember the first Christmas, the contrast could not be sharper. God did not enter the world with spectacle or abundance. There was no display of power, luxury, or excess. Instead, He arrived confined to a womb, born to a human mother. He needed warmth, nourishment, and care. He took on flesh—embracing limitation, vulnerability, and dependence.
The miracle of Christmas is not that God gave humanity more, but that He chose less.
Today, the holiday has become a logistical exercise. Did everyone receive enough gifts? Was the spending evenly distributed? Did we wrap everything in time? Sacred reflection is pushed aside by to-do lists and receipts. Efficiency replaces reverence.
We commemorate the Incarnation—God fully entering human life—by exchanging piles of disposable goods, largely to keep the economy humming. An estimated 20 to 30 percent of annual consumer spending occurs during the holiday season. We devote ourselves to consuming rather than contemplating.
Yet when I look back on my own Christmas memories, the presents barely register.
There are a few that stand out, of course. But what I remember most is time.
I remember baking cookies with my grandmother. I remember my grandfather’s Christmas morning ritual—baked eggs with potatoes and bacon filling the house with warmth and familiarity. I didn’t even eat them, as I was a vegetarian, but the smell alone signaled that the day had begun.
I remember building gingerbread houses and sneaking pieces of candy. Playing charades. Political debates. Laughter spilling from the living room. Friends stopping by without notice. Cheese and crackers spread across the counter. Endless snacks. Sugary treats. Conversations that stretched on for hours.
I remember attending fellowship services or Mass, depending on which grandparent’s home we visited that year. On Christmas Eve, my grandfather often delivered a sermon at his Unitarian fellowship. I looked forward to it—the stories he told, the way he stitched memory, meaning, and tradition together.
These are the moments that last.
The gifts fade. The connection endures.
I can’t help but wonder whether our hyper-consumer culture—obsessed with speed, novelty, and instant gratification—has hollowed out something sacred. Christmas has become full of things yet empty of meaning. Heavy with consumption but light on reflection.
The Incarnation tells another story. It reveals a God who values presence over productivity, relationship over accumulation, and embodiment over abstraction. Salvation did not come through excess, but through intimacy—by fully entering the fragile reality of human life.
Perhaps Christmas was never meant to be loud or lavish. Perhaps it was meant to be quiet enough to notice a child. Slow enough to gather. Humble enough to receive rather than acquire.
And maybe, by remembering that God came to us with empty hands, we can loosen our grip on all the things we feel compelled to hold—and, in doing so, rediscover what Christmas was meant to be all along.
The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.