Christmas gift considerations

These days, we're doing our little bit of Christmas shopping in preparation for our family gatherings at Christmas time. I find shopping to be hard work because of the overwhelming choices out there. Walking through a mall on Friday, I wondered if there isn't more clothing in the world than human beings can actually make use of, and why we continually have to buy new clothes if we're not really wearing holes in most of them. When I think about these kinds of things as I shop, malls get tiresome rather quickly! And those sorts of thoughts are unavoidable if you care about the earth at all.

But I do like it when I find the right item for the right person. And these are some questions I use to determine what is right:
 1. Will the recipient really use/enjoy this gift?
 2. Is it beautiful and long lasting, or will it break down and be forgotten over time?
 3. What impact has the making of this gift had on the planet and its resources?
 4. How does this gift reflect my care for its recipient?
 5. Would Jesus give a gift like this one?
 6. Does the purchase/creation of this gift empower people or corporations? How and why?

I didn't have a lot of luck at the shopping malls with regards to these questions, so I'm hoping to pay a visit to a different sort of store later this week, and perhaps I'll post some moodlings about it. Stay tuned. 

In the meantime, here's another set of shopping criteria that I think is quite brilliant if you like acronyms (paraphrased from Lynn A. Miller, author of a book I'm trying to get my hands on called The Power of Enough: Finding Contentment by Putting Stuff in its Place, and whose RULES were quoted in “Whose Birthday is it, Anyway? 2008”):

R = recyclable – will this gift and its packaging ever return to natural elements?
U = used – why buy new when something used can be just as good, and often nicely “broken in”?
L = local – can a local variety of gift strengthen the local economy and save fossil fuels?
E = enough – how much of this gift will be used, and how much is too much?
S = sustainable – does this item add to or subtract from our planet’s sustainability?

Of course, it's not always easy to find gifts that meet all these criteria, but the closer I get, the better the gift, and the happier I am to give it!