Provident Christmas Gifts for 2010

Christmas is just around the corner, and your ward Provident Living Specialists would like to weigh in on what you adults might think about getting for yourselves or for each other for Christmas this year.  Okay … we’ll admit that we’re neither Santa’s elves nor the voice of your conscience … even if we’d like to think we are.  So let’s get right to the point on this one:  we think this is the perfect year to get something (or several things) really practical and useful for Christmas, and not incur ANY debt while doing it.

Why would we say this?  Aren’t “diamonds a girl’s best friend?”  Aren’t the stores loaded with the season’s most compelling electronic devices, newest games, and hottest fashions?  And hasn’t the media been telling us for decades that practical gifts for Christmas are in bad form – even unthinkable?  And wouldn’t getting a much needed, practical gift for Christmas somehow spoil the moment?

In the Jewish culture they celebrate Passover in the spring, during which celebration a child is coached to ask the all-pertinent question:  Why is this night different from all other nights?  In that same vein allow us to formulate our question as follows:  Why is this Christmas different than all other Christmases?

Those who have been following the news might instinctively know why this Christmas is – indeed – different than all other Christmases.  As the poet Elizabeth Barrett Browning might answer, “Let us count the ways.” 

• The U.S. economy is sputtering along, and has been sputtering for several years now.
• The U.S. dollar is showing signs of major weakness (in fact, it has likely never been weaker)
• Savvy investors in the U.S and all over the world, and even the Chinese government, have been investing in Asia and in precious metals, not in American companies.  (This means that investors are not confident that their investments in U.S. based businesses will pay off for them, but gold (which produces nothing) will.
• Producers and buyers nation wide are reporting that food, textiles (especially cotton) and many other commodities have not only seen significant rises in prices over the past two months, but are likely to see even greater price rises over the coming year.  Rising prices are an evidence of a weak dollar on world currency markets.
• There are many, many other evidences of economic and currency weakness, but this is not the place to dwell on them.

The bottom line is here is that the structural weaknesses evident in the U.S. economy and currency (and in the economies and currencies of most other developed nations outside of Asia) should cause us to seriously consider the state of our world in the short term.

According to President Monson, many in the Church (and probably even a few in our ward) are not as prepared for challenging times as they would like to be.  In a September 1986 article, Elder Thomas S. Monson said, "Recent surveys of Church members have shown a serious erosion in the number of families who have a year's supply of life's necessities.  Most members plan to do it.  Too few have begun.  It is our sacred duty to care for our families, including our extended families."  Granted, that statement was made 24 years ago, but I sense that President Monson could say the same about preparedness today.  

The counsel of the prophets and apostles of God should be sufficient incentive for us to prepare, but some of us need the extra motivation a spectacularly gloomy news story gives us.  We would respectfully suggest that at the moment, BOTH conditions (too little preparedness in the Church and a really gloomy economic forecast) are more than evident.  And that with the advent of rising prices for essential commodities, time and opportunity to assemble our food storage might be shorter than we had hoped.

Your Provident Living specialists would encourage practical, essential purchases this Christmas, without going into debt, and we believe He whose birth we are celebrating would nod approvingly at the suggestion.

We testify that being prepared for challenging times gives us a peace that cannot be duplicated in any other way, and we further testify that the apostles and prophets who have so counseled us are called of God.

P.S.  Our grown children are getting solar cookers from their parents for Christmas.  We’re trying to practice what we preach.

We’ll try to post new information on it every week.  You can ask us questions (click on "Comments") through the blog if you desire.