This Xmas - If I am what I have, and I lose what I have, who am I?

In his brilliant books, Erich Fromm talks about how ‘Having’ modes of living (acquiring, owning and making profit) and how it provides little happiness in comparison to that of ‘Being’ - based on giving, sharing meaningful, creative, and productive experiences.

What’s interesting about this Christmas is that the ‘Being’ mode is really coming to the fore. Yes, Christmas has always been about giving. Yet this year, there’s substance!

This is the Christmas Oxfam ad, which encourages people to buy gifts for others (rather than my 'having' Xmas list) that really make a difference to the lives of people less fortunate than themselves.



The folk at Good Gifts also offer a variety of gifts such as beehives (in developing countries, honey is a popular source of nutrition) and a flock of ducks in rural India that eat venomous serpent, and snails that destroy crops.


They have proof that this shift is gradually coming to the fore too…

- 30,000 people benefited from your gift of beehives.
- Over 150 villages now have fresh water where there was none before.
- Over 4,000 children in developing countries have been given the gift of sight.
- More than 50,000 goats have passed through our goat bank.
- An estimated 150,000 orphans have been helped through orphans' dowries.

Erich Fromm also says that “Not he who has much is rich, but he who gives much”. His ideas may have been slightly utopian back then, but if you have any other Xmas examples, throw them into Santa's sack! :-)