wfn.org | On finding an angel in the sock drawer

[BethAH@mbm.org]

January 10, 2001
Beth Hawn
Communications Coordinator
Mennonite Board of Missions
phone (219) 294-7523
fax (219) 294-8669
<www.MBM.org>

January 10, 2001

On finding an angel in the sock drawer

Grant Rissler is serving through Mennonite Voluntary Service as a
writer and photographer.  After spending a year as intern at the
Mennonite Central Committee United Nations office in Manhattan,
he will travel for five months by bus to 20 other MVS and
Short-Term Mission sites, gathering the stories and experiences
of other volunteers and communities.  A weekly column by Grant
can be found on the web at www.MBM.org.

NEW YORK (CHM/MBM) – . . . Our living room floor lay littered
with wrapping paper, and the laughter faded as friends departed
in the cold December air for the Union Square subway stop.
Another Christmas party full of warm memories lingered as we
cleaned up together . . .

Christmas comes but once a year.  And so, in the multicultural
milieu of New York, do Hanukkah, Ramadan, Solstice and Kwanzaa.
Many people I’ve met here say there’s no better place to spend
the holidays, with the scent of pine from Christmas tree vendors
wafting through the streets.  The holidays bring a different
spirit to New York.

. . . We’d all chipped in to buy our Christmas tree from the
vendor on the corner, each person in the house adding some
decorations found in sock drawers or cut out from magazines.
Enthroned above the bright lights owned by the unit house sat
another sock drawer find, a sock monkey made by a resident during
a house craft night.  Our makeshift angel . . .

But they also bring the tune of billions of dollars in retail,
wholesale and sale-priced purchases.  Many retailers make as much
as 25 percent of their year’s earnings between Thanksgiving and
Christmas.  Market analysts update our society on the negative
side effects for the nation’s economy if we don’t spend enough.

New York in particular depends on its culture as a holiday
mecca.  Between the parking fees for the thousands who come to
watch the Macy’s Parade each year on Thanksgiving, the $110+ tour
packages for suburbanites making the pilgrimage to watch the
Rockettes in Radio City Music Hall, parents paying $15 per child
for two hours of ice skating at Rockefeller Center, or $50 for a
carriage ride in Central Park, a great deal of money enters the
New York economy over the holidays.

. . . In turn, each of us opened a wrapped gift, or stole the
already opened gift of someone else, setting off a chain of
switching.  The gifts – a spatula, a toy bear from a forgotten
shelf, a toilet plunger – had been gathered by one of the
residents and wrapped in old paper from previous Christmases.
Some had been bought at dollar stores, some found in the corners
of the house.  All produced jokes and laughter . . .

Not all the money goes to the department stores and the tourist
industry.  Each of the stores and tourist sites hires employees
to work holiday overtime that in turn is often the extra money to
pay for gifts for their families.  Churches and charities depend
on the holiday season to make up for the financial shortfalls of
the first 11 months.  The Salvation Army’s annual fund-raiser
during the holidays is so universal as to be part of our
subconscious now.  The social services provided by the city,
however under-funded, come partially out of the money that flows
into city coffers from holiday sales tax and tourist parking
tickets.

It would be easy to decry the over-commercialization of Christmas
in Manhattan, the opulent window displays that advertise
thousand-dollar evening gowns and heirloom-quality stemware. It’s
easy to point out the irony that the thousands of dollars
Manhattanites place in church donation boxes over the holidays
don’t seem to help the hundreds of homeless people who still
sleep in boxes on the steps of those same churches.

But it’s too easy.  The reality that many of the good things
about Christmas are derived from material wealth means that there
aren’t easy answers.  But there are some good guesses.

. . . Returning from Christmas with family in Virginia, I entered
the empty Menno House, fresh from an all-night bus ride.  It was
quiet.  The tree sat darkly in the corner, sock monkey still at
the peak, still smiling, still hearing the echo of laughter . . .

MVS is a program of the Commission on Home Ministries and MBM.
MVS maintains an official web site at www.mennonitevs.org.
* * *

Grant E. Rissler       PHOTO AVAILABLE