It's probably not a surprise to anyone who has read this blog for any length of time that I'm an atheist. But I have recently come across a couple items that take people to task for their Christmas extravagances from a religious perspective which I thought were worth sharing.
The idea for a One Hundred Dollar Holiday started in a Methodist church. The idea is that you try not to spend more than $100 on Christmas gifts. As a family, we're not quite there yet (I think Shea and I started with a $50 limit for each other and that recently got bumped to $100, we're only giving small gifts to the grandparents (which will be “from Pace”) and they're giving us small gifts as well supposedly. Pace, however, is another story – even though he's not even two and doesn't even “get it”, it's tough to resist the temptations and I know that at least one gift was one hundred dollars by itself. Then there's all kinds of little toys and trinkets. Sigh – maybe next year…)
Advent Conspiracy points out some alarming stats about our total Christmas spending versus how that money could be used very effectively otherwise and recommends four steps we could all take to improve the world
(via Make It Known and man, I need to update my blog roll one of these days!)
[Edit: Okay, one more – an image that captures the same sentiment as the last two links.]
And if none of that has changed your mind, here's a link to a pretty fun Gift Wizard. 
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