Thinking About Santa
Some interesting comments from Noel Piper:
Over the years, we have chosen not to include Santa Claus in our Christmas stories and decorations. There are several reasons.
First, fairy tales are fun and we enjoy them, but we don’t ask our children to believe them.
Second, we want our children to understand God as fully as they’re able at whatever age they are. So we try to avoid anything that would delay or distort that understanding. It seems to us that celebrating with a mixture of Santa and manger will postpone a child’s clear understanding of what the real truth of God is. It’s very difficult for a young child to pick through a marble cake of part-truth and part-imagination to find the crumbs of reality.
Third, we think about how confusing it must be to a straight-thinking, uncritically-minded preschooler because Santa is so much like what we’re trying all year to teach our children about God. Look, for example, at the “attributes” of Santa.
- He’s omniscient—he sees everything you do.
- He rewards you if you’re good.
- He’s omnipresent—at least, he can be everywhere in one night.
- He gives you good gifts.
- He’s the most famous “old man in the sky” figure.
But at the deeper level that young children haven’t reached yet in their understanding, he is not like God at all.
For example, does Santa really care if we’re bad or good? Think of the most awful kid you can remember. Did he or she ever not get gifts from Santa?
What about Santa’s spying and then rewarding you if you’re good enough? That’s not the way God operates. He gave us his gift—his Son—even though we weren’t good at all. “God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us” (Romans 5:8). He gave his gift to us to make us good, not because we had proved ourselves good enough.
Helping our children understand God as much as they’re able at whatever age they are is our primary goal. But we’ve also seen some other encouraging effects of not including Santa in our celebration.
Read the rest of the article here.
What about you? How do you do Santa?
CarrieZ says:
We’ve never taught Santa. We of course have a few picture books that include him, but we don’t ask what Santa will be bringing them, whether they’ve been good enough, etc. There’s really no need to teach any of it, because every grocery store checker, fellow shopper in line anywhere, etc. will cover that territory.
Our stockings and advent calendar depict the nativity. We do daily doors on the advent calendar, placing a magnet on the scene and reading a related (simplified) Bible verse. We have a stocking for Jesus. On Christmas Eve, we make a “Happy Birthday Jesus” cake (child-decorated, so quite lively), eat pizza for supper, and go to the evening church service. We come home, they open new jammies and put them on, we read the Christmas story (Bible, not Night Before Christmas), and they go to bed. We’ve set a policy with family that we will be HOME from Christmas Eve afternoon through Christmas morning. The families are good about respecting it.
We keep their gifts hidden until Christmas morning (often because they’re hard to wrap or because we have snoopers). We do wrap them in separate paper, but no tags from Santa, etc.
On Christmas morning, we open presents, then we light the candle on the cake and sing happy birthday to Jesus. It’s frosted with Cool Whip instead of frosting so as not to be a total “blech” thing first thing in the morning.
We watched the new VeggieTales St. Nicholas movie a few times–it’s terrific. Covers the territory of who St. Nicholas really was and what he did.
However, I will tell you that the last two years, our 6yo has desperately *wanted* to believe in Santa. When she asks about him, we just reply with “what do you think?” We do not encourage it any way, but we also let her believe if she wants to believe. She wants to put out cookies and milk for Santa, so we don’t argue. She wants to visit Santa, so we don’t argue, but we also don’t pontificate on how he will fit down our bizarre chimney or shake sleigh bells outside her window or any of that stuff.
I also think having tons of presents NOT for them under the tree allows them to concentrate more on giving to others and not on guessing what they’re getting.
We also limit TV, so their requests are super-reasonable. Our 6yo wants a “Raggedy Ann doll and a Raggedy Ann movie.” Our 2yo wants “candy.” Easy!
December 15th, 2009 at 12:46 pm
Daryl says:
We did the Santa thing growing up. As the youngest, my belief in Santa was crushed earlier that others. But I suffer no ill-effects today.
My wife, however, grew up in a household where a story book that had a picture of Santa on one page literally had those pages taped together so that no image of Santa was in the house.
Opposite ends of the spectrum to say the least.
We’ve talked a lot about it. My family really, really wants to “do” Santa with their oldest grandchild. My wife’s family would ever-so-briefly consider disowning us if we did.
At 17 months, our daughter won’t know much this year. But we’ve decided to call it a game that people play, and that part of playing the game is pretending that Santa is real. We can still have fun with the story, leave cookies, and all of that stuff, but she’ll know that it’s just a fun story – like Cinderella or Snow White. Fun to pretend to live in, but not real.
I think that’s a pretty good compromise.
December 15th, 2009 at 2:55 pm
Don Rogers says:
Michael- I was raised a Southern Baptist, my grandfather was a deacon, my father was a deacon, I was deacon for 17+ years. I was as deep into conservative, fundamental Christianity as anyone could be. In 2001, Christianity came crashing down around me. Nothing made sense to me about my denomination anymore. As an historian, I began to research my beliefs, the doctrines of the church, the history of Christianity (especially early Christianity). What I found was little was as it had been presented in church. My new freedom to search (without fear of reprecussions within the church) led me to reassess my relationship with God, our source, creator of all; to reassess who Jesus was and his purpose on this earth; to reassess the part played by the early church and today’s church. The God I was taught to believe truly parallels the characteristics which Piper elaborated in his article:
we think about how confusing it must be to a straight-thinking, uncritically-minded preschooler because Santa is so much like what we’re trying all year to teach our children about God. Look, for example, at the “attributes” of Santa.
He’s omniscient—he sees everything you do.
He rewards you if you’re good.
He’s omnipresent—at least, he can be everywhere in one night.
He gives you good gifts.
He’s the most famous “old man in the sky” figure.
Michael, I truly believe most Christians today would also describe God like the above. That is one of the greatest problems I find with today’s Christianity. I somehow, in my heart, don’t believe that is the way you truly see God. I read your post regularly. I hope I have assessed you correctly. I think about you and the problems with your son’s health often. Blessings to you and your family.
December 15th, 2009 at 6:42 pm
Dan says:
A couple of years ago I would have disagreed with Mrs. Piper’s post. But now that my kids are 3 and 5 I see the confusion that the Santa/Jesus thing brings for them for the very reasons she mentions.
My wife and I are trying to figure out how to “un-do” Santa Clause. Ultimately, I think a belief in Santa confuses my boys about the gospel.
December 16th, 2009 at 3:02 am
Anthony says:
Growing up my wife’s family and mine did Santa. i can say that it did not affect our relationship w/ Christ. i can not speak to a “delay” as piper puts it but i trust God’s perfect timing.
we had the first grand baby on both sides so a decision had to be made. Ultimatly the decision came down to this…was i going to lie? that may over simplfy things too much but i can not find away around that question. grand-parnets were not happy on both sides but all siblings were in agrement so as my brother put it…we killed Santa.
we have taught our kids that Santa is pretend just like Mickey Mouse. its ok to pretend God enjoys our imagination, and Christmas morning we give credit where credit is due, Thank you Jesus for the greatest gift of all.
December 17th, 2009 at 3:46 pm