23/12/2023
From our friend Karl Smith :-
About fifteen years ago an economist called Joel Waldfogel put out a book called ‘Scroogonomics’ in which he coined the term ‘The Deadweight Loss of Christmas’. I did economics as my third subject at university back in the day and I remember that a ‘deadweight loss’ is a loss to someone that isn’t a gain to someone else. So the theory here is that I buy you a present for an amount of money but what I’ve chosen isn’t worth anything to you. You would never have considered buying it. In fact you’re already thinking about how to get rid of it. So the deadweight loss of Christmas is:
The price paid for the gift minus the value set on it by the person who receives it.
I don’t quite know how he calculates it, but in the book, published in 2009, he worked out that the deadweight loss of Christmas was $25 000 000 000 dollars worldwide.
He comes to the conclusion that buying gifts is ‘a terrible way to allocate resources’. So if you have forgotten to buy someone a gift this year, just refer them to Joel Waldfogel and tell them that you wanted to avoid the Deadweight Loss of Christmas.
It isn’t really a deadweight loss of course because the shopkeeper gains by my gift even if you don’t.
I want to ask you about it of course in relation to God’s gift of His Son as this is Christmas. He couldn’t have given you anything he valued more. Listen to the Fatherly delight in His voice at the baptism of Jesus, now aged 30, when He says, ‘This is my beloved Son with whom I am well pleased’ (Matthew 3.17). Who can describe the cost to God of seeing His Son living rejected in the world, suffering the things we suffer and most of all dying painfully on a cross to take the punishment we deserve for our sins. The price of our sins was isolation from God. What must it have cost God to hear him in the darkness crying out, ‘My God, my God, why have you forsaken me’? It cost Jesus His very life and the intensity of all that suffering for my personal sin. He is ‘the Son of God who loved me and gave Himself for me’ (Galatians 2.20).
Is there a difference between the price paid by God and the value you put on His gift? He gave everything. Is it everything to you or nothing?
That’s the challenge of the deadweight loss of Christmas. I hope it won’t be that as far as you are concerned. This is a great time of year to thank God for what He has given you in Christ and to tell Him that you trust Jesus to deal with your sin by what He did on the cross. Whatever presents you buy and however you value what you’ve been given, show God how grateful you are for the gift He gave when He sent Jesus into our world.
‘For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life’ (John 3.16).
I hope you all have a great Christmas,
With love,
Karl
