Why I Told My Kids About Santa
What? I'm not real?
My son is four, so we haven’t really talked about Santa much. This year our church had Santa come into his classroom on Sunday. Santa is nowhere to be seen at our house normally, so his only exposure is tv, the mall, and last Sunday morning. On the way home we had a conversation about Santa. I told him Santa isn’t real, we just like to play and have fun with someone dressing up as Santa. I don’t think he really understood, either that or he took it extremely well. We did the same thing with my daughter Catrina when she was young. As a matter of fact we got a phone call from one of her friends parents asking if we could ask her not to talk to her friend about Santa.
What’s the big deal? Why ruin all the fun? I think there are good answers to both of these questions. The big deal is simple, Christmas isn’t about Santa and presents, it is about Jesus and we want our kids to worship HIM and not him. The adoration I see on other kids faces when they see Santa is not a mild appreciation, but a worshipful stare as if they had seen God Himself. I want our kids to have ingrained in their mind and their spirit the truth about Christmas from the very beginning. In addition I don’t want to lie, and it seems to me that allowing someone to continue to believe something like that is true from year to year is as much a lie as staring them in the eyes and telling them Santa is real. Sure I know all about St. Nicholas, but he is not Santa.
Why ruin all the fun? In short, we don’t. My daughter has known for years that Santa is not real, yet the past few years she has had her picture taken with him and even sat on his lap a couple of times. In addition to telling her Santa is not real we have also told her that it is ok to pretend and have fun with it as long as we keep in perspective the truth of Jesus Christ.
We started early, basically as soon as they were able to understand we told them. There were never any tears, anger, or bad feelings. They simply said “oh”. We never lost any trust and we never had to justify a lie of any size and our kids have grown up with a healthy respect for what Christmas is all about.
Comments
Your doing a great job.
My question is: What in the World was ‘santa’ doing at the church???
We did the same thing with Kailyn – and for the same reason – to lead her to believe that he is real would be deceiving her and lying.
I also have to share a deeper story that lead to our decision. Years ago a young lady was really struggling with accepting the truth of Jesus Christ. One of her biggest hang ups…Santa.
She was raised to believe that Santa was real and suddenly she learned the truth that he was just a story. Now, in her young adult life, she was facing the reality of Jesus…and “how do I know that Jesus is not just a story like Santa”…”how long until someone tells me he was never real either” – I was just a teenager when this testimony was shared with me, but it still impacts me today.
Kailyn has been the “Santa Spoiler” many times and it always interests me because even more than upsetting the kids, it’s the parents that are so offended. We have been faced with “please ask her not to tell” also – which brought an unexpected dilemma.
As I’m sure you have had to do…we handled this very delicately because in no way shape or form am I going to hinder her from speaking the truth in love…that is after all, what we are here to do right?!
Anyway – after that long story – I love how similar our Santa stories are who knew our kids would under go persecution in regards to Santa!
Leave a Comment