A Facebook friend alerted me to this docu-comedy titled What Would Jesus Buy? It looks hilarious based on the trailer. It’s showing in a select few theaters right now, and I’d encourage you to see it if it’s nearby as an antidote to America’s stereotypical consumerism which rears it’s borrowing head every December.

A list of partners is here under the heading “Save Christmas.” You can also save your city.

The following are a few places to find some nice, artsy and/or handmade Christmas gifts:

mLee Fine Art: Woodblock prints

MissionaryArts.com, linking to my favorite page on the site, paintings by Xiaoyang Galas including this piece:

ElegantScarf, for handmade scarves and accessories.

Porcelain by Kim Westad, delicate and unique pottery.

A few of my own sculptures are for sale via this link. As well, if you see something in my portfolio or on my Flickr that you’d like let me know!

I’m not alone!

Sunday’s Sherman’s Lagoon (17 December) pokes fun at the trendy but tacky inflatable yard decorations, which I’ve pictured here on The Aesthetic Elevator. Sherman proudly proclaims, “Ta Dah! Homer Simpson Santa! Nothing says Merry Christmas like enormous, inflatable lawn ornaments!”

Below is an entire herd of the balloon-like creatures from Steven Tom’s Flickr Photostream:

Someone in the Arts and Faith forum posted a link to this blog entry on Gaurdian Unlimited. Books are a need, not a luxury, for our children blogger Kate Figes asserts.

She goes on to say how this is a pricey gift option, but it is also one that will likely encourage your children to read Figes suggests. It is pricey because it takes, in her opinion, at least eight books to make an impressive stack.

The books, wrapped in tissue paper and tied with a ribbon, are the last gift her children open every year.

These chintzy air-powered contraptions are not befitting of Christmas. Please do not try this at home:

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What happened to simple and elegant white lights, garland and luminaries?
Kudos to the gentleman who wrote to the Northwest Arkansas Times yesterday bemoaning the recent direction of Fayetteville’s “Lights of the Ozarks — and spurring them on to greater and more well-considered visual decor in the future!

Here are some ideas for ways to strategically give this Christmas from Generous Giving:

•  A financial planner in Florida shared 150 copies of Alan Gotthardt’s The Eternity Portfolio with fellow professionals.
• A church in Knoxville, Tenn., obtained 250 copies of John Piper’s Money: The Currency of Christian Hedonism for its members.
• Missionaries from California sent 50 copies of Randy Alcorn’s The Law of Rewards to their supporters as a thank-you gift and as encouragement for their faithfulness.
• A Michigan mortgage company distributed Andy Stanley’s Fields of Gold to all its clients.
• A church in Minnesota purchased 3,000 copies of Andy Stanley’s Fields of Gold and distributed them to the congregation.
• About 100 copies of Randy Alcorn’s The Treasure Principle were given as welcome gifts to all new families at an Atlanta church.
• A radio station purchased 75 copies of Gordon MacDonald’s Secrets of the Generous Life as listener giveaways during a generosity study.

I didn’t pay much attention to the hype surrounding David Blaine’s “Drowned Alive” stunt in May. Such things hold very little, if any, interest for me.

But his most recent stunt impresses me — not because of the stunt but because of the charitable implications. Blaine is presntly suspended over Times Square, and will be for a total of three days or so, after which he will take a bunch of “deserving” kids on a shopping spree (in association with Target stores and the Salvation Army).

See photographs of Blaine in the gyroscope on the Gothamist. See Joanne Colan interview him while suspended on Rocketboom.

Who do you know that could use a leg up this Christmas? Do you or your kids really need the newest iPod, or can that money be used as an “eternal investment?”

“It is more blessed to give than to receive.” Acts chapter twenty.

Another idea for the Christmas list this year (and admitted a shameless plug for my wife) is something handmade — anything handmade and made well in this day and age of mass production.

My wife loves to crochet. Presently, yarn and the scarves crocheted from the yarn are taking over our den and second bedroom. Frilly fru-fru scarves, warm heavy scarves and scarves crafted with vintage yarns.

Help us reclaim our den and bedroom; buy a scarf for your honey from her Etsy shop: The Elegant Scarf.

One of the more notable organizations headquartered in Arkansas (other than my friends at the U.S. Center for World Missions mobilization office in Fayetteville!) is Heifer International. Heifer allows a person to give money towards the purchase of an animal or group of animals which will help create food and income for people around the world without food or income.

Animals range from bees to water buffalo:

In this day and age when we in the western world (perhaps in the U.S. particularly) have more schtuff than we know what to do with — so much schtuff we need mini-storage and PODS — why give your loved one another trinket that will sit on the shelf and need to be dusted around. Or worse yet, end up in the attic or mini-storage.

And while you’re at it, check out their new “green” headquarters in Little Rock.

Earlier this year I was able to meet one of the people heading up the OneMaker project in Afghanistan. She spoke at the Five Gallery in Siloam Springs about the project helping Afghan women out of poverty by teaching them a trade.

That trade is making jewelry. The necklace and earrings they are working on presently are crafted from silver (smelt from common objects, as I recall) and native lapis lazuli, and are quite beautiful:

The necklace runs around $50. Earrings are also available for about $15. Proceeds go to the suffering women of Afghanistan.