How to 'Save' Christmas: Get Christ as far away from shopping centers as possible!

Bill O'Reilly and other deep thinkers have renewed their annual attack on those who would prefer to hear "Happy Holidays" rather than "Merry Christmas."

Like so many national "conversations" these days, this is an utter waste of time. Millions of middle-class Americans are so burdened by credit-card debt that they're only a few missed paychecks from financial ruin. Thirty-odd million Americans live below the poverty line, with millions of children going to bed hungry each night. Iraq, Pakistan, Darfur: war, earthquake, holocaust.

But thanks to some C-students who ditched school the week their Civics teacher covered the Founding Fathers and their views on religion, what we might do to be good Christians--that is, to address our problems and alleviate the world's suffering--is of less interest than wedging a creche in front of The Gap at the local mall.

And they say liberals have screwed-up priorities!

I can understand why these so-called Christians are working overtime to put Christ back in Christmas shopping--Jesus has become the poster boy for holiday spending. Really, they ought to work up slogans to get you to whip out that Visa card faster: 'He gave all. Why don't you give some?' Vulgar, but it would work--shopping is easier than being a Christian.

Although I am somewhere between a Jew and a Buddhist, I think I know something about what Christianity is like. I saw Jesus in the flesh one time. And another, I felt Him in me.

Seeing Jesus: In 1987, I was doing a story about a lynching in Mobile, Alabama. One evening, Michael Donald, an 18-year-old kid, went out to the store. Some Klansmen came by, forced him into their car, beat him, lynched him and left him hanging. And they were going to get away with it until Morris Dees, founder of The Southern Poverty Law Center, filed a civil suit against the KKK on behalf of Michael's mother, Beulah Mae Donald. She won--and in the process, bankrupted the Klan.

I visited Mrs. Donald in her sweltering apartment. She was serene: "From Day One, I turned this over to God." Although she was on welfare, she knew what to do with the money: "I'm going to give it to people who are really hurting." That was when I got the shiver--this was what Christ was talking about. More: this was the word made flesh. God bless that amazing woman for revealing His Spirit to me.

Feeling Jesus: It was my senior year in college. I was five months away from being drafted and, presumably, shipped off to Vietnam. On a December night, I went to hear Marion Williams, a gospel singer I knew nothing about. She was magic. I came out, flying, into a night as clear as it was cold. Everything sparkled. Everyone shone. I grasped that the universe was held together by strands of love. That I had no enemies. That everything was exactly as it should be.

That high lasted for a week. I've sought it ever since, with no success. And I'm certainly not feeling it this month. Just the opposite--every bomb that explodes in Iraq seems to go off in our living room as well. We're royally bummed. Because there's a child involved, we'll go through the motions and make sure she has presents and lights and family, but that's it. As I wrote on Head Butler:

My wife's holiday cookies--a tradition for more than a decade--aren't happening this year.

And if you're waiting for a holiday card with a fetching photo of the little one, better send me an e-mail and I'll reply with a jpeg of the kid.

What's wrong?

More or less total absence of the holiday spirit.

This year, for whatever reason, we feel over-burdened by situations that, individually, we cannot hope to change. So we are buying ourselves exactly one costly present--a professional-grade espresso maker and an insanely expensive coffee grinder. But we've done the math, and it removes all guilt; in just four months, the money we save not buying triple grande lattes at Starbucks will pay for these machines.

After that whopper, everything else gets scaled back. There are children to buy for, and we will meet those obligations. Everyone else is getting small things: books, CDs, movies. Then comes the charity part. Because the hurricane inspired many people to give to the Red Cross and other disaster agencies, charity giving in New York is running behind last year's figures. At supermarket checkout donation boxes, The Food Bank for New York City has collected about 50% of what it got during this period last year. Donations to The Salvation Army are off $160,000. Citymeals-on-Wheels is running 15% behind last year.

"First feed the face, then talk right and wrong," Bertolt Brecht wrote. We're with him. And so the money we don't spend on expensive presents and the money we save by not baking cookies and sending Christmas cards will go mostly to hunger-relief causes. We're partial to Share Our Strength and Second Harvest, but I suspect we'll spread our giving around. On the international front, we'll donate to Doctors Without Borders, which is working frantically to provide shelter for victims of the Pakistan earthquake.

And then, along with our small gifts, we'll enclose a note to our loved ones, explaining what we're doing--in their honor--around the country and around the world.

Let me emphasize: We're not scaling down on presents and amping up our charity giving for any 'holier than thou' reason. We're not trying to 'set an example'. We don't seek admiration. We're celebrating the holidays this way because, this year, it's the only way we can think of to get through them without feeling small and silly and sad.

This column produced a tsunami of email. Let me share just one:

Several years ago I worked for the gas and electric company in customer service. The week before Christmas I got a phone call from a woman who had just lost her mother and been left a bit of money. She wanted to do something nice and asked if I knew of someone she could anonymously help. I told her about a family of five I'd just spoken to--they had their electricity cut off and had no money to turn it back on. She offered to pay, I got everything sorted out, and, along the way, I told everyone how the woman who had lost her mother was helping this family and how it had inspired me to buy a few gifts and take them by this family's house on my way home to my family. My colleagues began opening their wallets and giving me money, the meter reader who turned the electricity back on took them food, others from his local office took a tree with lights and decorations, my friends asked me if they could pre-pay on the people's electricity bill and on and on. The generosity of these people was wonderful and heart warming.

With my carload of gifts and money, I stopped unannounced in a very poor part of town at the family’s very small, run-down house. The young mother was sitting in the front window staring blankly out onto the dirty street, a beautifully lit Christmas tree twinkling with lights behind her. When I came to the front door, she was a bit puzzled--but obviously thrilled and incredibly thankful for all the gifts.

I explained the story of the anonymous donor and the desire of so many people who just wanted to help make her family's Christmas bright.

What she said to me has stayed with me all these Christmases since: "She's lost her mother here at the holidays! What can I do to help her?"

In that spirit, I ask: What can I do to help you? What can we do to help each other--and people we don't know?