By Phoebe Farag Mikhail

Toy catalogues rarely make it into my house. I intercept them at the mailbox and promptly recycle them before my children know they exist. Catalogues are kindling to the fire of consumerism, one that has overtaken all of us. It has especially overtaken our children, who are subjected to more advertising than perhaps anyone in history.

To make things worse, advertising has become more subtle and insidious. Favorite YouTube content creators quietly add product placements in their sponsored posts. Other influencers build a following to sell their own wares. Even paid streaming services now include advertisements.

The end result is an incessant barrage of requests for things—more toys, more clothes, more products—and a recognition of how much easier it is now to obtain these things than it ever was before. “Just get it from online!” my kids will tell me. All you need is a credit card linked to an online store, and your product is a click away, sometimes shipping on the same day.

There is no visible link between the work necessary to pay for the credit used, and no visible link between the availability of the product and the work necessary to create or assemble the product. There is almost no effort, even, to make the purchase. Consumption has been visibly divorced from work. 

So, there’s no need for me to add glossy catalogues full of gorgeous photographs to the mix. I often toss them without a second glance … until I got the Amazon holiday toy gift guide. I stopped when I saw the title: “Share the Joy.”

It’s not the first time Amazon has bandied the word “joy” on their catalogue. I remember being incensed the first time I saw it: “Joy, delivered.” Considering that Amazon has only served to promote our generation’s hyper consumption, how dare it throw around a word like “joy” in its promotional materials? Does Amazon think it can sell us joy?

Overconsumption is one of the “thieves of joy.” It can land us under the passion of gluttony or of greed. Gluttony involves consuming and consuming well beyond what we actually need. Having what we need helps us thrive, but too much stuff adds to our stress. Hence we have a booming economy of decluttering experts, and sometimes even need the support of mental health professionals. A book advocating for an extreme form of decluttering, The Life Changing Magic of Tidying Up by Marie Kondo is a bestseller. Our stuff burdens us and even leads us to more consumption to deal with all of it.  

Marie Kondo’s method of dealing with this problem has resonated with many people. In summary, her advice is to touch every item in your possession and only keeping what “sparks joy.” (She also advocates for keeping only fifteen books at one time, which already made her advice suspicious to me.) There is the word “joy” again, used in reference to things we possess. Is it really “joy” that arises when we touch a favorite item of clothing, a toy, or teacup?

Believe it or not, Amazon and Marie Kondo agree. Amazon’s gift catalogue encourages us to “share the joy,” presumably by purchasing the items advertised in the catalogue (in which books are suspiciously absent). Marie Kondo only wants us to keep those items that “spark joy.” In other words, paradoxically, both Marie Kondo and Amazon agree that possessions can be a source of joy.

They might agree, but I disagree. Possessions can spark nostalgia, pleasure, delight, happiness, or comfort in moderation; but they can also spark stress, anxiety, debt, and more in excess. These excesses rob us of joy. Succumbing to desires for too many possessions leads to gluttony. And when we don’t have enough to fulfill our gluttonous passions, we can fall further into the passion of greed. Greed leads us to hoard what others need, perhaps even exploit others for our personal gain, so that we might own more, and more and more, in an effort to satisfy ourselves with things that can never satisfy.

We need moderation to avoid falling into gluttony and greed. But there is no such thing as “moderate” joy. Joy by definition is something more, much more than happiness or pleasure. But more possessions do not lead to more joy. The joyful St. Paul writing epistles in prison assures us that we can have joy even if we own no possessions. Neither Amazon nor Marie Kondo are correct; neither excess nor minimalism can give us joy.  Joy offers us a life of abundance whether we own much or whether we own little.

This year, though, when I received the Amazon catalogue entitled “Share the Joy,” I held on to it for a few minutes. My church’s mom’s group has been reading The Five Love Languages of Children, and “receiving gifts” is one of the five love languages. Giving a gift to someone you love, especially someone whose “primary love language” is receiving gifts, is a powerful way to fill up someone’s “love tank.” And for children, Campbell and Chapman argue that families and caregivers should be offering all five love languages, to ensure that a child feels loved, even if the child has only one or two primary love languages.

And although the visible link between work, creation, and consumption has disappeared, as a parent who works for the income we need to spend on the items we consume, I’m very much aware of the link. When I spend time, energy, and resources or money to give a gift to a loved one, I’m making a sacrifice out of love. “Joy is found in the giving and receiving of sacrificial love,” I write, in my own book about joy.

So, the giving and receiving of a gift, thoughtfully made or purchased, could indeed be a practice of joy. After thumbing through that catalogue before it landed in the recycling bin, I found an excellent gift for one of my children. I saved it to my wish list, and if I don’t find anything better, I’ll be gleeful when it’s opened up Christmas with laughs of surprise and pleasure.

Over time, the items that make up the gifts might eventually be forgotten; they might be repurposed, regifted, damaged, age, or just no longer be useful. What won’t disappear is the joy of my children receiving them as gifts from someone who loves them, who thought about their interests, needs and desires, and who worked to have the income to purchase them. As Chapman and Campbell write,

The giving and receiving of gifts can be a powerful expression of love, at the time they are given and often extending into later years. The most meaningful gifts become symbols of love, and those that truly convey love are part of a love language. Yet for parents to truly speak love language number four—gifts—the child must feel that his parents genuinely care. For this reason, the other love languages must be given along with a gift. The child’s emotional love tank needs to be kept filled in order for the gift to express heartfelt love. This means that parents will use a combination of physical touch, words of affirmation, quality time, and service to keep the love tank full (pages 77-78).

The gift catalogue that arrived at my mailbox is only a tool, the items advertised in it mere possessions. Physical objects can only embody joy when they are shared in the context of self-sacrificial love. Otherwise, they are stuff, the catalogue fueling excessive consumption and filling up landfills when we hire consultants to help us declutter.

If I love my children, however, as much as I might want to share this love by showering them with gifts, I also must show them love by teaching them how to be content with what they have, so that they don’t attach joy to their possessions, but to love. Otherwise, they will fall into the same cycle of overconsumption and discontent. And before I teach my children this, I must teach myself. For I, too, can easily succumb to the pleasures of possessing, the hedonistic treadmill pushing me to want more and more.

Six years ago I reviewed The Grace of Enough: Pursuing Less and Living More in a Throwaway Culture by Haley Stewart. You can read the entire post here. In it she shares the antidote to overconsumption: God, family, connection and community. These fill us in the ways overconsumption never can. These will help prevent us from succumbing to gluttony and greed. More time cultivating our relationship with God, with our families, and with our communities through authentic connection means less time shopping online and exposing ourselves and our children to the onslaught of advertising that wears away our resolve.

More time reading, especially reading books off the internet, and reading with our children, can help us forge those connections. My friend Summer Kinard just opened up an independent bookstore, where she hopes books will help forge connections to her local community as well. It’s not ironic, then, that one of the most common items I encourage readers to buy (or borrow) on this very blog are books.

Even too many books, however, can overwhelm us, and I, a self-professed bibliophile, have on several occasions had to cull our family library for space reasons (and to make room for more books). Books can burden us if they become mere possessions and not used for their purpose—to be read, enjoyed, to build connections with, and to build community.

Perhaps the best thing to do if we have excess possessions is not to touch them and see if they “spark joy,” but look at them honestly and ask ourselves how they serve us. If they don’t serve us, how might they serve others? Can they contribute, in any way, to authentic connection with God, our families, and our communities? And if they don’t serve anyone, how do I work to make sure such things don’t become my possessions in the first place?

A few weeks later I received ANOTHER gift catalogue from Amazon, this one emblazoned with the words, “Unwrap Joy.” This, too, I bristled about, despite the kernel of truth: joy, ultimately, is a gift. It’s not, however, a finite, material gift to be unwrapped, enjoyed for a time, and then disposed of or donated. Theologian Miroslav Volf writes, “Like love, joy is one of the “eternity seeking” emotions. It wills itself as a permanent state.” Joy, given freely to us by the God who gives, grows with time.

If we orient ourselves to receive that gift of joy from God, we’ll be surprised by its abundance. Christ himself tells us. “If you, then, though you are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give good gifts to those who ask him!” (Matthew 7:11, NIV). God is no minimalist. He gives generously gifts that will last forever.

With discernment, we can certainly buy the gifts and give them as expressions of love. Advertisers can sell us the gifts, but they can’t sell us the love. We’re the ones who can turn mere material objects into symbols of something spiritual and eternal. We can do this with the smallest and simplest of gifts. Let’s not allow the big companies to convince us that they can do this for us. Let’s not allow the big companies to convince us that we are not enough, that we need more and more things to satisfy us. Recycle the catalogue—and share the joy.

---

Books mentioned in this post:

Unironically, some of the affiliate links in this post are Amazon affiliate links, and I will receive a small commission if you use them to make a purchase. Even as I wish all of us could purchase our books from local, independent booksellers, the reality is that eighty percent of books are still purchased on Amazon. Amazon did first begin as a bookseller before branching off into selling almost everything. Some links are also Bookshop affiliate links, and sales from Bookshop do support independent booksellers. You are not obligated to make a purchase through these links, but if you do, the small commission I receive helps cover the costs of running this blog and sharing this content with you.