BBC Radio 4 2016-01-02

Earlier this week on this programme, a senior adviser to the ride-sharing company, Uber, predicted that fewer and fewer of us will own cars in the future as we make more use of cheap forms of transport. If that happens, it’s another sign of how what we think is essential to own is changing. Home ownership peaked in Britain more than 10 years ago when over 70 per cent of households owned their own home, whereas as now it’s 63 per cent and renting is growing. And then there’s music and film: we used to own records and later CDs, and videos and DVDs, but now we download instead. Whether it’s a change in the economy or in technology, certain things once considered vital possessions no longer are.

And yet, going by first Christmas and then the sales, people still spend a fortune on goods, whether it’s clothes, or gadgets, or sports kit, make-up or perfume. Even on Christmas Day people keep buying: an estimated £700 million was spent online on Christmas Day. So while ownership is changing it’s still thriving.

Yet the ringing of the tills doesn’t please everybody. Pope Francis warned in his Christmas homily that the world is intoxicated by consumerism, wealth and extravagance. The Archbishops of Canterbury and York have also at times attacked what they see as rampant materialism. The secular philosopher Bertrand Russell similarly argued that preoccupation with possessions that prevents people from living freely and nobly.

And yet Christians are about to celebrate a feast which is all about luxury possessions. January 6, the feast of the Epiphany, marks the moment when the three wise men, or kings, arrived at the stable in Bethlehem, with their gifts of gold, frankincense and myrrh. These were great treasures in the ancient world, indicating that the Magi wished to honour the newborn child, recognizing his significance. I can’t imagine that apart from gold they were particularly useful to a carpenter’s family from Nazareth, but that is not the point, just as that is not the point of the gifts we give one another. They honour the gift people make of themselves to one another, just as the Magi honoured the gift of God made flesh in the form of a baby and freely and abundantly given. Possessions, taken to extremes, can end up possessing us, but those we give, at this time of year, whether simple or extravagant, are a sign of delight taken in the world, in one another and in God and a symbol of the giving of oneself.