We’re still in Advent, but who can resist singing Christmas carols? They are either fun, boisterous and bouncy. Or they are sentimental and sweet.

“Hark! The Herald Angels Sing,” “God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen,” “Deck The Halls” fit the fun, boisterous and bouncy theme. “Away in a Manger” and “Silent Night” fit into the sentimental and sweet category. Although I do admit that as much as I love Christmas music, by about now in the Advent season I start identifying with the 17th century English poet John Donne: "I need thy thunder, O God; thy songs do not suffice me.”

But there is one well known carol that defies all categories: “We Three Kings of Orient Are.” [If you can get your choir to sing it here, or invite the congregation to sing it, all the better.] It is cast in a minor key. Its message is not very perky. It sounds different from all the other Christmas music. And if you really listen to the words, some of them are downright downers.

The carol tells of journey and mission of the “magi.” We will celebrate in liturgy their star-led journey in January, but since Christmas giving traces its origins to their gifts, and this sermon is about gift-giving, we need to say a few things this third Sunday in Advent about those better known as “wise men” or the “three kings.” The song was composed in 1857 by the Rev. John Henry Hopkins for the Christmas pageant that year at General Theological Seminary in New York City. But why is it so different, in tone, in timbre, in theme?

Perhaps it is because those “kings” themselves were so different from the rest of the Christmas crowd that this carol strikes such an unusual chord. Those so-called “kings” were extreme outsiders. Very doubtfully “kings,” they were most certainly not Jews. Their belief in a single God was unlikely. In a best case scenario, these travelers were elite Zoroastrian priests, quite Gentile, probably from Persia or perhaps Arabia. We know there were at least two of them, but just because they brought three gifts doesn’t mean there were three of them. In short, the “magi” were Arab astrologers who found their spiritual guidance and meaning in the stars.

These unusual travelers, and unlikely detectives, were guided by the stars. But they were counseled by their consciences. These strangers to the faith spent weeks, months, perhaps even years following heavenly clues they believed would bring them to some greater revelation of divine power a newborn “king,” a “king of the Jews.” They were not concerned that this great sign would be found in the form of a child. The incarnation of something so significant in something so small seemed not to faze them at all. When crafty Herod sent the magi towards Bethlehem, using them like bird dogs to flush out this rival “king” so that he might destroy him, the star gazers have no problem taking the advice of a dream over the orders of a powerful ruler with a track record of treachery. Their faith in the spiritual advice they receive enables them to ditch Herod without a second thought for their own safety or reputations.

Matthew’s birth narrative, our only source of information about these “magi,” never says there were three of them, only that they brought three gifts: gold, frankincense, and myrrh. Having invented three kings, however, by the sixth century the church had also named these magi, although the Eastern church called them Hormizdah, king of Persia, Yazdegerd, king of Saba, and Perozadh, king of Sheba. The Western tradition named them in words more familiar: Gaspar, Melchior, and Balthassar.

The gifts these long-traveled Gentile strangers brought to the child weren’t “useful” little items the new baby might need. Although each gift was costly, they were designed to symbolize the identity of the child these magi sought.

Gold, most obviously, meant kingship.

Frankincense was the scent used to invoke the divine presence, so that offering frankincense to the child recognized his divinity.

Myrrh had two different connotations. The Eastern church equated myrrh with the identity of a healer. The Western church equated myrrh with death, the ultimate sacrifice that this King would make.

The gifting frenzy that grips us this time of year is supposedly based on the gifts that greeted Jesus’ birth. And on the surface, it seems to work.

But wait a minute.

The gifts of gold, frankincense and myrrh had monetary value, to be sure. But their real wealth was in how they revealed the true nature of the baby the star lead them to, and birthed in Jesus’ life the very things they symbolized. The gold, the frankincense, the myrrh prophesied the presence of Jesus as King, Jesus as God, and Jesus as Savior of the world for the first time. Just as Mary had physically given birth to the baby Jesus, the gifts of the magi birthed the reality of the “newborn king’s” mission.

Now this may be controversial for some of you: but I believe there is no escaping Christmas shopping. I respect those laboring to promote shopping-free Christmases. But good luck with that. You can’t escape shopping. You’d starve to death if you didn’t shop. We don’t have a barter economy any longer, and even barterers shop.

But it is time Christians demonstrate another way of shopping than kamikaze consumers. Christmas presents aren’t just about more, better, bigger, faster, glitzier, blingier. The celebration of Christ’s arrival on this earth needs to be about more than just “kissing the bull.”

While Moses was up the mountain chatting with the Almighty and cribbing notes onto stone tablets, the people waiting down below got restless. Worn down by the wilderness and wound up by the bad ideas of some, they decided to create a more accessible deity. Gathering the gold they had gleaned from Egypt, they melted it down and cast for themselves a nifty golden bull. Once this gleaming god had been created, the people bowed down and worshiped it. To pay homage and honor this gleaming god, the worshipers would approach and reverently kiss the golden bull. “The people kiss bull” is how the Scripture phrases it (cf. 1 Kings 19:18; cf. Hosea 13:2).

Is Christmas-shopping our form of a bull-kiss?

No doubt, gold has become god for our twenty-first century consumer culture. No doubt, at Christmas time especially, when we are supposed to give gifts to celebrate Jesus’ birth and emulate the homage the magi offered to the Christ child, we can quickly find ourselves caught up in “kissing the bull.”

Zhu Zhu pets, these $8 robot hamsters that are now going for $100 on eBay because they are the rage of this Christmas season, are an appropriate symbol for a kiss-the-bull culture that is spending its life running a hamster wheel.

It wasn’t the price of the presents the magi brought Jesus that revealed their worth. Those first Christmas gifts announced the birth of something wondrous in this world — the newborn king, Emmanuel, who would save the world.

In other words, the gifts of the magi provide an alternative model of gift-giving to this culture of consumption. In fact, you might call this one of the greatest failures of the church in the last 100 years: its inability to confront a culture of consumption with an alternative model of living in the world than “I consume, therefore I am.”

What if we were to ask a new question of ourselves when we go Christmas shopping? Not “What should I buy?” but “What can I birth?” What gift could you offer to another person that would birth something good and true and beautiful in them? In other words, what if your gift were not a bull-kiss, but a birth-kiss? But this; Birth that.

Buy art, not for its resale value but for its story-birthing value.

Buy children’s gifts that stimulate their creativity and their minds, not that franchise Hollywood and Disney.

Birthing gifts enable others to truly celebrate the birthday of the newborn king. In today’s gospel text when the people urgently ask John the Baptist, “What should we do?” John doesn’t order them out on a shopping spree. The actions he asks them to take transform the giver as much as the receiver. John told the people to be personally involved—to give the shirt off their own back, the food off their own table. He told those whose profession was despised to give justice and equity to everyone they worked with, to give compassion and truth to those without power. In that way the “viper’s brood,” even the tax collectors and Roman soldiers, would birth repentance in their own lives.

Have you noticed how the #1 jeweler in North America bombards our tv this time of year with ads. Try watching any football game without a commercial for Kaye Jewelers. And you all know the slogan: “Every Kiss Begins with K”

Every birthing gift does begin with “K” . . . when your gift kisses the birth of Christ’s presence in someone’s life, when your gift truly celebrates the newborn baby, when you kiss the King. Instead of “kissing the bull” this year, what if we were to kiss the King with every gift? When the consumer culture keeps reminding us that “Every Kiss Begins with Kaye,” don’t kiss that bull! Every kiss does begin with the letter “K,” but the birthing kisses that celebrate Jesus’ birthday begin with “K” for “King.”

One Christmas a young mother watched sadly as her two young children came down with a bad case of the “gimmes.” The kids were so consumed by the fun of opening more and more presents that they barely registered what they had received, much less the giver. Ripping through the wrappings in order to stockpile more, faster and further had become the whole point of Christmas.

Determined to cure her kids of the “gimmes,” this Mom invented “The Present Game,” and the children learned to “play” it all year long. Each child was given a sack or container of some sort and told to go and choose something in the house to put in it. The present had to fit in the container and they were instructed to find something they though their sibling would like. Then the “gifts” were exchanged. The rules of “The Present Game” mandated that upon opening their present the receiver must think of something nice to say about the gift, express interest in using it, and thank the giver for the gift.

The kids caught on. Over the course of the year their gift-giving and gift-receiving skills were honed. After a few months “playing” this game they could find a good quality in practically anything. When the sister gave her brother one sock, the boy could say, “Thanks, this will come in really handy the next time Mom loses one of my socks in the wash!” When the brother gave his sister a handful of dog kibble, the little girl was delighted: “Goody, can we go to the dog park so I can pass this around?”

“The Present Game” transformed the children from kissing the bull into kissing the King, birthing the transforming love of Christ’s presence in each gift exchange. The identity of a Christian is measured, not by what is consumed, but by what is conceived. Buy this, birth that.

Let us not be children of a lesser god. Let others bow down to things made of wood or stone, gold or fur (zhu zhu pets). As for me and my house, as for you and your house, as for this house, let us serve the living God.

And when you serve the Living God, the newborn King, Every Kiss Begins With “K”

Kiss the newborn King. Buy this; Birth that.