A post popped up on facebook about Operation Christmas Child which operates in our schools. It is ran by the Evangelist Billy Graham. The article states that the religious converting motivations of the project should be kept from people in Britain. The article can be read here:
http://humanistlife.org.uk/2015/10/14/why-parents-shouldnt-support-operation-christmas-child/
It got me thinking about the idea of gift and it seemed relevant to post my response in this blog.
"I
have no issue with religion and the spark it gives to do good. I just
think that we should try to be as transparent as we can in our
motivations. Of course that is a constant personal effort when working
with people whether you are religious or not. Am I saying one thing and
expecting something else. Am I promising one thing and giving something
else? To give something and say in return I would like this to happen is
probably the core of reciprocation, a corner stone of our human
society. If its explicit perhaps that is ok. Example of mixed messages
was when the pilgrims went to The Americas and were given peace pipes.
They took them and put them in their museums. The tribes who gave the
pipes had a strict structure with the pipe. At a gathering it was smoked
and given to a guest, they would then invite everybody for a do at
there's pipe smoked and past on. In this way the pipe was a shared asset
kept circulating within the community. The pilgrims took the gift in
their own cultural spirit, an asset which they could keep and do what
they wanted with. Hench the phrase Indian giver, one who gives a thing
but then expects it back. The different cultures felt that the rules of
gift were so clear that there was no need to converse about them (or
they deliberately misunderstood if you are being cynical about it).
Perhaps it is better to make the terms of a gift explicit at the off
especially when operating within other peoples cultures. The idea of
gift is a much more complex one than we at first think. The reason this
article shocked me was because operation Christmas child were marketing
savvy enough to realise that in an increasingly secular or religiously
diverse Britain the truth of the religious backbone should be
deliberately hidden in order to make parents give to them. That's pretty
cynical. If they had kept to the same policy given in America, where
evangelism is more accepted, each parent could make a choice about if
this was the best way for them to give to others this Christmas."
What are our unwritten rules when we give a gift? What would the rules of Christmas giving look like if we tried to write them down for an alien from outer space? That might be an interesting exercise.
