This coming Christmas will be the second celebration of the birthday of our Saviour Jesus Christ since the ongoing Great Recession began in the third quarter of 2008. It is hoped that it will be the last one as recovery seems to be in sight in many parts of the world, especially in the so-called emerging markets. Let us not waste the opportunity to reflect on what the spirit of Christmas can contribute to our understanding the roots of the collapse of capitalism and consumerism.

The supreme lesson of Christmas is without doubt the immense love that God has for mankind in sending His only Begotten Son to take on our human flesh in order to redeem us from our sins. God gave us the highest example of the love of benevolence when He came down to suffer for us without expecting anything in return. It was a completely gratuitous love. As I have written in this column quite a number of times, capitalism or the free market economy can only be saved from future catastrophes if the producers, financiers and consumers who make up its system are convinced that a gratuitous or selfless love is an indispensable ingredient in their human relationships to one another. They have to renounce once and for all the false premise that virtues, especially the virtue of charity, are irrelevant to the efficient and sustainable workings of a market economy. They have to accept the empirically demonstrated fact that markets--whether in the real economy or the financial sector--are not self-regulating.

There is, however, another important lesson from the Christmas story that can save capitalism and its allied culture, consumerism, from their excesses. As we pray in front of the manger in Bethlehem, worshiping the Child God and venerating His parents Mary and Joseph, one obvious truth that hits us in the face is that an accumulation of material goods is not the end all and be all of human happiness. Bereft of even the most essential physical comforts, the Holy Family--all three of them--exudes the greatest joy on the birth of the Redeemer. It is also joy that we see in the faces of the first visitors, the impoverished shepherds that came from the hillsides of Bethlehem.

The great lesson of Christmas is not that poverty is in itself a virtue. After all, the God Child when He grew up did not hesitate to attend sumptuous feasts tendered by friends who were sinners; performed his first miracle to save a married couple from the embarrassment of not having enough wine to serve to their wedding guests; wore an expensive garment as He was being crucified; enjoyed many times the hospitality of his friends Mary, Martha and Lazarus. The lesson of Christmas is detachment from the goods of this world, even if we have to use them in order to live in the middle of the world as ordinary citizens. The lesson of Christmas is not to put our happiness in the accumulation of earthly goods. The lesson of Christmas is to rejoice even if there are times when we do not have even what is needed for minimum comfort and decency.

The two typhoons Ondoy and Pepeng taught many of us some of these lessons. I am not referring obviously to the poor who lost even their meager possessions. I am referring to those in the middle class who live in Marikina, Cainta, Pasig, Dagupan, Rosales, and other places where floods and landslides caused much destruction to property. Those who still had their whole families intact realized that the TV sets, DVDs, refrigerators, pianos and other appliances and in some cases, as in Magallanes Village, the cars that were damaged by the floods were of little consequence compared to still being able to love their families and being loved in return. They saw clearly the difference between "having" and "being." It is hoped that those who experienced the tragic loss of their homes and/or furnishings will help in constructing a culture in the Philippines that goes against the consumerism that has caused much unhappiness in the wealthier countries of this world.

The consumerist culture resulted from the separation of Christian faith and daily life in these countries. As stated in the Compendium of the Social Doctrine of the Church (par. 554): "Without a metaphysical perspective, the loss of a longing for God in self-serving narcissism and the varied means found in a consumeristic lifestyle; the primacy given to technology and scientific research as ends in themselves; the emphasis placed on appearance, the quest for an image, communication techniques; all of these phenomena must be understood in their cultural aspects and placed in relation to the central issue of the human person, of integral human growth, of the human capacity to communicate and relate with other people, and of the constant human search for an answer to the great questions that run throughout life. It must be kept in mind that 'culture is that through which man, as man, becomes more man, 'is' more, has more access to 'being.'
The generous souls who came to the rescue of the typhoon victims also had an unexpected lesson in the spirit of Christian poverty. As they rummaged through their respective closets and cabinets to look for clothes, appliances and other articles that could be given as relief goods, they realized that they had unwittingly accumulated kilos if not tons of unused and unnecessary belongings. Some of them could compete with a famous First Lady in the number of pairs of shoes they possessed, not to mention pairs of pants, shirts, jackets, and other accessories that they had not touched for years. Let us admit that there are many of us who belong to the middle and upper classes of society who have the bad habit of accumulating things that we do not need. This is especially true in these days of gadgetry when there is an impulse to always get the latest cell phones, laptops, cameras, etc. This Christmas, whether or not there are more flood victims to help, why don't we ransack our closets and clean them up of items that have been unused for years and give them to the needy persons around us or to some charitable institutions engaged in helping the poor.
The God-Man who was born on Christmas Day gave us the eight beatitudes. In the first one, he did not say "Blessed are the poor." Rather, He said, "Blessed are the poor in spirit." We are poor in spirit if we do not make the accumulation of material wealth the end of our lives. We are poor in spirit if are detached from the things we possess, sometime voluntarily making do without them. We are poor in spirit when we do not complain when circumstances deprive us of even indispensable items for comfort. We are also poor in spirit if we use all our talents to create more wealth so that we can generate employment for others and help the needy. It is obvious that the spirit of Christmas is a good antidote to the abuses of capitalism and the culture of consumption that have brought about the present economic crisis. For comments, my email address is bvillegas@uap.edu.ph.