OK. It's always a good idea to lie to your kids and then later on tell them that you were lying to them for their benefit. That goes really well...
Forgive me for being sarcastic.
Seriously; we told our kids the truth. Jesus is real; Santa is not. Some people acted like that in telling our kids that Santa was not real (we did share the historical story of Saint Nick, etc.) that we were the ones committing sacrilege, robbing them of their childhood, ruining the "Christmas Spirit," blah, blah, blah.
But, I think we've handled it the right way.
The effect has been that, in the mall (which we now rarely visit) or grocery store (which, with five kids, we constantly visit) someone will ask our kids, "Are you excited about Santa coming?"
They say (it's happened a few times), "No. We're more excited about Jesus."
And- "We don't celebrate Santa. We celebrate Jesus."
Of course, since we have five kids- three talking really well and one sputtering and chiming in equally loud but with less understandability- it creates quite a furor of excitement.
Most people have been happy; many have wondered how we could hijack Christmas from them and force them to follow Jesus.
Thankfully, we will not be one of the sets of parents that asks a kids (coaxes them, even) to believe in Santa so that they can "enjoy" our Americanized/ mass-consumption/ credit and debt-driven version of Christ-mass... only later to have to convince the child that they can still believe in the Virgin Birth, the Resurrection, Heaven... and all of the other intangibles that they may now question us about lying to them about.
Don't believe what I’m penning?
It's happening. Kids today fall away from the faith at an alarming rate. If you trace it, 1 in 4 kids who "become Christians" when they are children actually hold on to their faith by the time they reach adulthood (source: Voddie Baucham's Family Driven Faith, which is a fantastic read, by the way). That means with today's average of two kids per household, it takes two families to actually launch one Christ-follower (not mere Christ-believer) into the next generation.
By the way, I’m constantly shocked at the number of parents I meet- in Christian circles- that ask me “not to ruin it” for their kid (like, don’t post it on a blog somewhere... where they can log on and read it?).
I'm not saying that if you believe in Santa Claus- or, at least, lie to your kids to do this- that their life will be ruined. Bottom line to me is that parents who do that probably make a ton of big mistakes in other areas that are equally to blame.
For us, we already have enough baggage of our own that we're working through, enough mistakes we need to train them out of, and enough of our own sins that we don't want to pass on to them...
The day is about Jesus, anyway.
And, I wouldn't be getting your kids to believe in and celebrate The Hulk on your birthday (as fun as the party might be)- it's 1) untrue and 2) dishonoring.
Doesn't your King deserve the same honor?
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