Santa and Jesus

[To read a blog on the history of Santa Claus click here]

Recently, my wife was taking our son, who turns two and a half on Christmas Day, through the checkout. In that tone by which adults can sometimes speak to young children, the cashier asked my son, “Have you gotten your letter off to Santa already? What did you ask for?” He stared at her with a blank look, he didn’t know what she was talking about, not because he couldn’t understand her but because he—intentionally—hasn’t been taught about the modern myth of Santa. My wife respectfully responded to the cashier, “we don’t celebrate Santa, we remember Jesus’ birth at Christmas.” The cashier looked somewhat confounded by my wife’s answer; that a child would be deprived of the happiness of believing in such a myth, however, as my wife was respectful the conversation ended—though somewhat awkwardly on her part—with politeness and a seed being sown for her to think about.

Is such a view being too Grinch like or is their wisdom in such a view?

I for one was part of the syncretistic Christian culture of past decades that fused Jesus and Santa together. I cringe to remember that our local church even brought Santa into the church for the service. To the contrary my wife’s family grew up not teaching her and her siblings about the myth of Santa, instead focusing on the real meaning of Christmas. When my wife told her friend (who happened to be my 2nd cousin) that Santa wasn’t real, she burst into tears and my wife ended up in the principal’s office with a call home to her mom!

As a maturing Christian, and now a parent, I’ve moved from how I was raised to the view my wife and I hold today: to not perpetuate the culturally embraced myth of Santa but focus on the real reason of Christmas. We don’t do this in a Grinch like spirit and so far from spoiling joy for our son, his joy is made complete.

Here are three reasons why we don’t teach him the myth of Santa (there are many more):

1. We don’t want to lie to our son.

If Santa is a myth (though the origin in Nicolas of Myra certainly is not), then why would we want to lie to him? The Bible teaches parents ought not to provoke their children (Eph 6:4), seek what’s spiritually best for them (Dt 6); how then would lying to them be helpful, both for their spiritual development but also their view of your character? If we lied here would he trust us in other areas, even if it was a lie “just for fun”? We want to encourage our children to be faithful to the 9th commandment (Ex 20:16), not to break it (or break it ourselves!). We want to encourage them to seek truth in the person of Jesus (Jn 8:32).

1. We don’t want to promote an unhealthy message that is contrary to the Gospel.

The modern myth of Santa is diametrically opposed to the Gospel. See two excellent videos that contrast the message of Santa and the message of Jesus here and here. If this is so, why would we want to confuse our children with a message of self, material joy and hope and reliance on someone other than God? These are root spiritual problems. Rather we should want to point our children to the message that Christ came “to save His people from their sins” (Mt 1:21) to save each boy and girl, man and woman, who’d repent and trust in Him for their forgiveness. The real meaning of Christmas is a far better message, one that is real and one that can change your life forever.

1. Why settle for a meagre substitute of joy when real joy is on offer?

The joy of the Christmas message itself, and ultimately accepting that as your own, has stood the test of time and is sufficient to bring joy in darkness such that no other message is needed or can rival it. It brings me great delight when our son, far from being robbed of joy, sings this simple song that his mother taught him from her childhood, with great joy:

Come on ring those bells,
Everybody sing,
Jesus is the King,
Born for you and me.
Come on ring those bells,
Everybody sing,
Jesus we remember it’s your birthday.
 
How do we celebrate Christmas with our son? We tell him about Jesus and the Christmas story and the Gospel. We explain that all of the adornments of Christmas (greenery, goodies, etc) are all to help us celebrate the Incarnation. We give him gifts, in love, from mummy and daddy, and say that we give gifts because God gave the greatest gift of all, His Son. And that is something worth celebrating!