TALES...SPECIAL FESTIVAL ESSAY

SPECIAL FESTIVAL ESSAY: FEAST CARDS AND PRESENTS I'VE RECEIVED AND GIVEN

Usually when most people think of giving cards and presents throughout the year, it's often during special occasions of significance that mark significant milestones in our lives. Birthdays, anniversaries, weddings, Christmas--we all either use them as opportunities to show appreciation to those that have shown us varying degrees of kindness throughout the year or (depending on our personal desires, inclinations, and motivations) as chances to give our wish lists to all of those we know so that they might buy things for us that we might not otherwise be able to obtain for ourselves or in which we are just too bleeping lazy to get for ourselves in the store the rest of the year.

Yeah, it seems that one of the most often used phrases around Christmastime goes like this: "It's more blessed to give than to receive." From someone who was originally raised in a background along those lines and then who later came out of it, after a while the whole thing just got (to tell you the truth) pretty trite and disgusting. It seemed that the whole occasion seemed to me sullied with commercialism and "I've got to have this." and "I just have to find this under my tree or I'll just die."--and it afterwards seemed that the original and genuine thrill was gone from this certain occasion because of it.

So when I first came into the WCG during the times that attendance at the Feast of Tabernacles was still considered mandatory, it at first came as an apparent shock that--believe it or not--the folks in this church actually gave gifts around this time of the year, too. But what was even more shocking (and quite refreshing to me, too) was the actual spirit that the gifts that were given to me by various people in the Church. No spirit of commercialism, no desire of "trying to get what I want" in return for this certain favor that they (in their infinite kindness, they presumed) have bestowed upon me. No--for once the kindnesses that were shown to me were not insincere or given out of a root spirit of selfishness--but instead truly out of the heart and for a love and a compassion bore from a right relationship with the very Savior that they worship. No expectations were presumed--and certainly the favor was not allowed to be paid back in any fashion. It was done simply just for the joy of giving and without ANY concern whatsoever about any recompense that should eventually return back to them anytime during the rest of their lives.

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