Santa's Elves Outsourced

Years ago I had a neighbor who worked as one of Santa's helpers. I wasn't living anywhere near the North Pole. Much further south, in Port-au-Prince, Haiti. She sewed up fluffy, cute stuffed animals, many of which made their debut under the Christmas trees of boys and girls in the United States and Canada.

To make sure she stayed busy as an elf, she was paid by the piece. If she worked really fast she could make 14 cents an hour. Most of Santa's helpers in Haiti lived in single-room tin and cardboard shacks in vast overcrowded shanty towns with open sewers.

I'm not sure what Santa had to pay his elves. Maybe they had formed a union. But the elves are not the only ones who've suffered from Santa outsourcing workshop jobs up north to sweatshop jobs down south. We all suffer from this economic model that has come to dominate our world and our lives.

A friend sent me the link to a wonderful little online movie that explains the hidden price we all (and our environment) pay for just going along with this. Take a few minutes to watch this short streaming video and pass it along to your friends.

We really don't have to put up with this. And there's not better time to change our ways than during this festival that celebrates the birth of one who came to announce liberty to the captive. We've been taken captive by this model that impoverishes us and trashes our planet. This little video can help us see our way free.

Has Anything Changed?

Six years ago our world changed... or did it?

John Engle was up from Haiti and staying with us here at our home in DC on September 11, 2001. (John is a co-founder of Beyond Borders.) We could see the smoke rising from the burning Pentagon out my office window. My wife got calls from worried friends who were waiting to hear from loved ones.

Together we watched the local news and saw the burning towers in New York fall. By that afternoon our horror had turned to fear--not fear of what the terrorists might do to us but what our nation, the world's most lethal military giant, might do in response to them.

We feared that we would return violence for violence and that it would mostly be innocent people who would suffer. We worried that our response would only intensify the hatred many feel for us around the world and that this would only make the world more divided and more dangerous.

In the days that followed I wrote an essay called Loving the Terrorists. It was my own little prayer that our nation would have the courage to hear and follow the hard words of Jesus, who told us to love our enemies and pray for those who persecute us (Matthew 5:43-45).

Following Jesus isn't easy. I certainly don't do a very good job most days. And it was too much to hope that a nation that had invested so heavily in military might could resist the urge to strike back.

Strike back we did in ways I could never have anticipated. Half a trillion dollars later we are bogged down in Afghanistan and Iraq in a global war with no end in sight. Over half a million Iraqis have died unnecessarily; and the numbers of those who hate us and are willing to die to kill us has multiplied many times over. The good will that even some of our traditional enemies had for us in the days following 9-11 is long gone.

The world did not change on 9-11. It remains the same eye-for-an-eye world where we become more and more blinded by each act of violence. Jesus is merciful, though. He restored sight to the blind.

May He restore our sight so that we can see ourselves reflected in the eyes of our enemies. May He give us the courage to put down our swords and love our enemies even as He loved us (and died for us) while we were still enemies (Colossians 1:20-22).

David Diggs

*The poem above was composed on 9-11 by our dear friend from Northern Ireland, Patrick McManus. We collaborated with Patrick when he worked in Haiti in the '90s.