‘Fed Up, I Suppose’ by Felip1, flickr.com/flipflik
Boxing Day in Australia is the day following Christmas Day. The exact origins of Boxing Day are unknown, though my favourite version refers to the tradition in Britain during the 17th century. The custom began with tradespeople and servants who usually worked on Christmas Day. The following day they were allowed to return home to visit their families. Their employers and masters would often give them a box containing gifts and bonuses, and sometimes left over food.
Boxing Day in Australia, however, is more commonly associated with shopping and sales. And who doesn’t love a good sale?
Plenty could be said about the materialism during this holiday season – pre and post Christmas. Enter Jerry Seinfeld with this rather insightful stand-up routine about the objects we collect over this period: otherwise known as garbage.
Here’s the video:
My favourite lines:
All things on earth only exist in different stages of becoming garbage. Your home is a garbage processing centre where you buy new things, bring them into your house and slowly crappify them over time. This is your life.
It’s a wonderful insight from a relatively secular comedian because scripture has been saying the same thing for millennia.
“Fear not, little flock, for it is your Father’s good pleasure to give you the kingdom. Sell your possessions, and give to the needy. Provide yourselves with moneybags that do not grow old, with a treasure in the heavens that does not fail, where no thief approaches and no moth destroys. For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also. [Luke 12:32-34]
Jesus said long ago that the things of this world ultimately fail: if a thief does not take it, moth or rust will ultimately destroy it.
And you can take none of it with you when you die.
…for we brought nothing into the world, and we cannot take anything out of the world. [1 Timothy 6:7]
John Piper says of 1 Timothy 6:7 – ‘There are no U-Hauls behind hearses.’
Everything gets thrown out in the end.
Receiving gifts at Christmas is great. The greater news of Christmas is that the greatest gift has been given in the Son. A gift that death could not destroy, and a gift that can never be taken away from those who trust him.
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