What if you don’t give your kids the Christmas they deserve? (We know they deserve it because they are wonderful, as all kids are wonderful.) What if they wake up on December 25 at five am and discover that they didn’t get the new Nintendo, the American Girls Doll, this year’s i-whatever?

What if you make Granny mad by saying that you can’t bear to have anymore plastic junk in the house. Are you ready to tell the kids that there’s no Santa, and we need to make the mortgage this month, which is going to be hard since Daddy’s been laid off?

Many of us would really like to simplify the holidays. (Since Christmas is the holiday most victimized by corporate takeover, I’ll concentrate on it here, with the understanding that all our December faith celebrations have received the same treatment.) For many, it’s a question of household economics–it’s simply too expensive to buy every family member a gift, usually several for the children, and then absorb the extra expenses of fancy meals, the tree, and perhaps travel to be with family. The average American household spends an extra $700 in December.

The other reason to rethink the holidays, that is being voiced more and more, is this: It’s simply no fun the way we’re doing it. A month of stressful shopping for adults is compounded by the overall tendency of our culture to schedule all sorts of “special” events in December (holiday parties, school plays and concerts). It all culminates in a frenzy of unwrapping and eating on one day, which is then followed by a lot of cleaning and a terrible confrontation with bills in the month of January.

Rev. Cecilia Kingman of Portland, Oregon, struggles with these issues every year, in a congregation of mixed-classes. Yes, many people want to simplify the holidays, reinstate the primacy of their faith at that time, but can we really offer this solution to those in poverty? What part of Christmas involves addressing people’s real material needs? “{Simplicity at the holidays} is a very good practice. However, it does assume that the participants already have what they need. So I suggest an alternative for households that may be struggling, and in line with the way Christmas used to be celebrated: Give people things they truly need as presents. For example, I’ll be giving one family member some warm boots.”

While some people are able to make family-pacts to reduce or eliminate gift-giving, for many there will be terrific resistance to such a suggestion from both the elders and the youngsters. Older people who consider themselves self-made, have carved out a certain prosperity in their lives, often want to show generosity at the holidays, especially to children.  They may resist the exhortations of their strapped, grown children to “tone it all down”.  Kids, of course, are rabid little consumers by nature.

Here are some suggestions from CSC members around the country, talking about their approach to the holidays:
“I bought everything at the thrift store!”
“We don’t do gifts for adults, only kids.”
“My father wanted to give me something practical, so we agreed he’d take my car to the shop and get it tuned up and repaired. He probably saved me a whole year’s worth of delayed car repairs, as I never have time to deal with this stuff.”
“We’ve all agreed to make only homemade gifts, which are often small offerings of food: Fudge, applesauce, salsa, jams. You pull it out a few months later and it’s like Christmas all over again.”
“I give everybody wool socks in fun colors. It’s become a joke-I’m the sock-auntie.”
“I put aside money from every paycheck for Christmas.  That makes for a much better January!”
“I have freed myself from most of the commercial side of Christmas, gifting only to my nearest and dearest and modestly at that, but still every year the week before Christmas I panic and reconsider—it’s the “did I buy enough?” feeling.”

There are no easy solutions to the puzzle of meaningful holidays in this culture, except to keep your own counsel and offer what you can in the spirit of the season.  Excellent resources exists for those who want to “downsize” Christmas, including Bill McKibben’s book Hundred-Dollar Christmas, and Unplugging the Christmas Machine, by Jo Robinson and Jean Staeheli. On the web, have a look at the Adbusters campaign Buy Nothing Christmas for serious anti-consumption politics. Center for a New American Dream has excellent practical suggestions for simple, cheap, fun holidays.

And for a take on holiday consumerism that’s both fun and thoughtful, rent “What Would Jesus Buy?” about the Reverend Billy and his travelling choir of anti-consumer evangelists. Show it to your mom.

By Grace Lee Bogs

The greatest human need facing the American people is to stop shirking responsibility and to start assuming responsibility. This is what Jimmy Boggs wrote in 1963 in The American Revolution: Pages from a Negro Workers Notebook, which has just been reissued with a new introduction by me and commentaries by six other Detroit activists.

This human need was not so clear in 1963 because the issues then were not so urgent. Global warming was not threatening to extinguish all life on Planet Earth. Millions of people were not jobless because of the economic meltdown and increasing de-industrialization. In 1963 it still made some sense to look to Washington because politicians had not become so dependent on corporations for their election.

Fortunately there are growing signs that the American people are waking up to this reality. Last week I described some of the grassroots steps, like community gardens or neighbors joining to install solar panels, that Americans are taking to slow down global warming,

Since then I have learned from an article by Chuck Collins (Common Dreams, Oct. 9) that CommonSecurityClubs (CSC) are forming around the country. As the economic crisis reminds us of our vulnerabilities, an increasing number of Americans recognize that we must take responsibility by building authentic security and demanding accountability.

Participants, he says, have been able to reduce anxiety about our finances  and see the abundance that still exists in our communities. What weve discovered by coming together is that we cant face the changing economy in isolation.

CSCs bring together people from a variety of backgrounds: Secular groups, such as community organizations, unions, and neighborhoods, and religious organizations and congregations. www.commonsecurityclub.org

A CSC provides:

-A common ground where people explore the challenges of personal security in a changing world;

-Information to learn the root causes of the ecological and economic challenges we face;

- Opportunities to explore ways to strengthen our economic and personal security through shared action and mutual aid;

- An opportunity to strengthen community by building solid relationships.

CSCs include three basic components. The first component focuses on learning and understanding the larger economic forces at work through popular education tools, shared readings, and videos. Mutual Aid and Local Action are explored through stories, a workbook, and web-based resources that allow participants to reflect on what makes them secure. The Social Action component explores issues that require people to work together to engage in the democratic process to initiate state, national, and global transformations.

In the Oct. 2 SOJOURNERS, Collins reports on the success CSCs have had in congregations around the country. One pastor reflected that facilitating a club was the most meaningful thing she had ever done as a minister: There is something powerful when people [feel] they are in charge and facing the economic and ecological future with open eyes.

Six months into the process, existing clubs have identified concrete benefits, including overcoming isolation and shame through Reality Support Groups. Congregations have started small local actions with unemployment support groups, establishing bartering exchanges, and forging get out of debt pacts.

Ideally, these groups foster human relationships that provide the revolution of minds and hearts that Jimmy Boggs speaks of in The American Revolution. These critical connections provide the foundation necessary to begin the radical revolution of values or cultural evolution advocated by MLK.

CSCs provide the opportunity to revisit a forgotten idea, the idea that we can do for ourselves. In this post-industrial epoch, we must learn that doing for ourselves means transforming our conception of ourselves to mean, not the me of an exploitative capitalistic culture, but ourselves as defined by us, the we of our extended families, our community, our hood.

In doing so, we can begin the two-sided transformation necessary to evolve past the paranoia and fear of losing our jobs to the post-industrial transformative mindset of sharing our work.

Originally published in the Michigan Citizen on Dec. 10, 2009.

By Chuck Collins

In the Boston neighborhood around our church, the wreckage of the economic meltdown is still palpable. Foreclosed houses sit empty, metal grates shutter businesses and the view toward the future is anxious.

Many of my fellow congregants have watched their job security vanish and savings evaporate. Grown children have moved in with their parents. Parents have doubled up with their grown children. And the demand for our church’s food pantry has outstripped donations.

Last winter, 60 congregants gathered in our parish hall to try to find a way, together, to confront these issues. There were tears of shame and deep expressions of fear.

We shared a reading from the theologian Walter Brueggemann suggesting the economic crisis was a call to move from “autonomy to covenantal existence,” from “anxiety to divine abundance.” He stirred visions of an early Christian church, putting our trust in God’s hands, pledging to hold wealth in common. But what did this mean in hyper-individual Mammon America?

Part of our church response was to form a “common security club,” an approach being piloted at several congregations in the Boston area at the same time. Our club is part-study group, part-mutual aid, and part-social action — a way to hold one another, spiritually and practically, as we face uncertain times. Fifteen of us have met twice monthly since January. Another club formed out of church members over the summer.

With very little publicity, a mini-movement of these “common security clubs” has formed in churches of varying denominations around the U.S.

At each meeting, participants learn a bit more about the economic crisis, by watching videos, reading articles, sharing what we know. We’ve strategized over personal budgets, shared tips to live more frugally, and helped our unemployed members network about jobs and health insurance.

Members have made pacts to get out of debt and cut up credit cards as ritual. One Boston club did a “weatherization barn-raising,” helping one another insulate their New England homes for the winter in order to save hundreds of dollars in fuel costs. We have bartered for services among ourselves swapping yard work for childcare, computer skills for language lessons.

At all our meetings, we gather around a potluck - a manifestation of “loves and fishes” abundance if there ever was one.

I recently gave a presentation about our common security club to a group of ministers and lay leaders.

“Isn’t this what church should be?” asked a pastor from Washington state. “When did pastoral become so excessively focused on spiritual?”

There are probably many answers to that question. A generation of “you are on your own” economics has chipped away at our mutual aid skills. We understand charity, but reciprocity is very hard. Maybe this is an Anglo church problem. My friend Donald, a lifelong Baptist, informed me, “To survive, our Black church tradition has always had mutual aid associations. It was impossible to separate the pastoral spiritual from material economic necessity.”

Our group has recognized the value of practicing with the small things, simple bartering and hospitality. Even with the shared experience of an economic disaster, most of us still feel deeply ashamed that we haven’t figured out economic security on our own.

We may not become like Apostles in the book of Acts -renouncing materialism in favor of wealth held in common. But we can go much further in holding one another in prayer and drawing from the wealth and skills and experience we have together. Maybe that’s what church is?

Chuck Collins is a member of First Church in the Jamaica Plain neighborhood of Boston. He is a senior scholar at the Institute for Policy Studies and co-author of “The Moral Measure of the Economy” (Orbis). Learn more about Common Security Clubs.

Originally published in the On Faith blog at www.washingtonpost.com on Nov. 2, 2009.