Christmas Jars Book

Let me just start: This book is a steaming pile of conservative propaganda horse turds.

The turds are both implied and blatantly steaming.

For example, after Thanksgiving dinner, the Maxwell family would get together, talk about Christmas, and decide "who was tasked with visiting the lovable and loony Cousin Gregg, forever a guest at the Greenbrier Adult Developmental Center." You get that? Loony, as in an insulting term for a man who has to live in a home that cares for mentally disabled adults. Not only are the Maxwell's name callers, but they have decide who goes, as if poor Cousin Gregg doesn't deserve to see all of his family!

Then, there are the families that are surprised with Christmas Jars full of a year's worth of change. One woman, sitting in her home with her infant, freezing because the heat has been turned off, receives a Christmas Jar and is able to pay her bills. She and her husband, a long-haul trucker, learn that they simply need to budget better. You don't get your heat shut off in winter because you're poor at budgeting, your heat gets shut off because you're living on the brink of freaking poverty.

Even weirder is a woman who has had three miscarriages. Her husband has been verbally abusing her because she hasn't carried a baby to term, and he also threatens her that when they do have a baby, it better be a boy. (Don't worry; there's some really friendly wording: "Her husband said over and over that only a baby boy would make their relationship 'relevant in the eternities'..."). The book says she's having miscarriages because he's upsetting her so deeply. The Christmas Jar doesn't help this family financially (they have money), but a stranger's kindness reminds her that she's "not alone." So...does she leave the husband? The book implies that now her uterus will work because she won't be so stressed; they'll have their boy, and a Merry Christmas, too.

Just to make sure the patriarch as the head of the household message isn't explicit enough for you, the novella celebrates a man for all his generosity--despite the fact that the Christmas Jar was his wife's idea, and she kept it going after the first year. So, you know. Dad wins.

Finally, I get that donating once per year makes everyone feel warm and fuzzy inside, and this book takes that feeling and gives it to people daily because they throw some change in a jar, but you have to remember that people living in utter poverty--and believe me, I've read many stories of real people living in poverty--don't get to share in your daily good vibes. They get to be cold, hungry, dirty, abused, stressed, sick, raped, killed, left behind in school, beat up, abandoned, FACELESS. This is Psychology 101; feeding your "superego" helps you, and it's a big part of why we love donating.

But a feel-good Christmas activity isn't the best we can do as responsible citizens--not even close. Do you love to donate? How would you feel about having a slight increase in your taxes to pay for more social services, like food stamps and public housing? No? Should we tell public funding recipients just, like, you know, budget better? If you go to the Christmas Jars website, you can read about all the "miracles" of people receiving money in jars. Mostly, the stories detail the use of money to pay medical bills. Having the money to pay for medical treatment shouldn't be a "miracle."

Well... I'll certainly have a lot to say at book club next weekend.