The Santa Issue

I started to write a post about our indecision on whether or not to tell Forest that Santa is real when I stumbled upon this blog post on The Gospel-Centered Mom, which put it so much more eloquently than I could ever hope to.  You should really read it because I think she brings up excellent and thought provoking points which articulated so many of the jumbled thoughts in my head. 

To summarize, she says she always intended to make Santa a part of her children’s childhood but when it actually came time to do so, she opted not to because 1) if she pushes the lie of Santa’s existence then she loses credibility when she tells her children about hard-to-believe biblical events like Noah building the ark or Moses parting the Red Sea or Jesus healing the blind. Children believe their parents hook, line, and sinker, so it feels a bit dishonest to push the agenda of something I don’t believe in. Forest is still far too young to get these concepts but I know one day his curious mind will be full of questions. When he asks how Santa manages to traverse the world in one night with a sleigh or how his reindeer fly or how he gets inside when children don’t have a chimney, I don’t necessarily want to keep buying into it with long elaborate answers to keep his skepticism at bay. 

2) Santa is way too similar to God (omnipotent, omniscient, and omnipresent) which for a child can be pretty confusing, especially since Santa’s gifts are works driven and not grace given. 

But for me the most important point she makes is 3) Santa is a distraction. Commercial Christmas has started to completely overshadow what we’re truly celebrating. It’s hard for a child to be excited about the birth of baby Jesus when they are waking up at 5 AM to see what Santa has left for them under the tree. We want Christmas to go back to the basics. Forest will receive 3 gifts from us, one for each of the gifts Baby Jesus received from the 3 wise men. He will receive 30 gamillion gifts from his grandparents who I assure you are more generous than Santa could be on his very best day. 

 

Carter's

We don’t plan on shying away from the issue of Santa, we just aren’t going to push the agenda. He will be a fun Christmas time mascot who we will sing about, watch movies about, and wear PJs about. 

But we don’t plan on going above and beyond to protect our child’s belief in something we know isn’t real, not when we are trying to protect his belief in something much more important, and something the world seems less and less accepting of. 

That being said, our hesitations about the Santa issue didn’t stop us from taking Forest to get the classic ‘toddler crying on Santa’s lap’ photo. And I must say, He nailed it. 

What do y’all think about the Santa thing? Harmless fun or something a bit more complicated? I have to admit  that I was in the ‘harmless fun’ camp until Forest was born and would totally roll my eyes at parents who didn’t do the whole Santa thing. Funny how having babies makes you put your foot in your mouth over and over again.....