My kids are 8, 6, and 2 years old. All 3 of them still believe in Santa. Although, last week Ainsley, my 8 year old, wrote a letter to Santa which reads like a Guantanamo interrogation:
Dear Santa,
How do you get into our house? You must be really tired at the end of all the presents. How many elves do you have? Are you really real? If you are please do something like draw a picture of something. Do you really have flying reindeer? How do you know what presents belong to each house? …
Your friends,
Ainsley, Aidyn, Aryn
P.S. I’ll leave you some paper so you can draw a picture, and write up a signed confession.
OK, so I made up that last part about the confession (though not the first part of the P.S about leaving some paper to draw a picture).
Earlier this year we pulled the rug out from under the Tooth Fairy. I’ve been debating about whether it’s time to come clean about Santa Claus too.
One of the things I wonder, though, is whether keeping up the Santa ruse for all these years will cast a shadow on the real Christmas story for our kids. Will they think, “Hmmm, if Santa isn’t real, then maybe Jesus isn’t real either.”
After all which is the bizarre story? That a fat guy in a red suit rides around in a sled with flying reindeer delivering presents to boys and girls around the world? Or that a woman who never had sex was impregnated by God, and her baby who was born in a barn was God in flesh and the savior of the world?
At first glance the two stories are neck and neck on the you’ve-got-to-be-kidding-me scale.
So, anyways am I crazy? Has anyone else ever thought about this?
That’s why we don’t tell our kids that Santa is real. I’ve got no problem with Santa and we don’t do any kind of anti-Santa teaching, I just think the emphasis of Christmas should be on Jesus and giving–Santa puts the emphasis on me and what I get.
It’s definitely a hard decision and I don’t think there are easy answers. My mom is pretty big on Santa and said her mom tried to do the same thing I’m doing with Santa when she was a kid–but my mom insisted that Santa was real.
Great post my friend. I have been trying to tell my 7 year old that Santa doesn’t exist but she doesn’t believe me. I think if i just continue to teach her Jesus that santa will fall away and Jesus will stand true and real.
Every Christian goes through this debate at some time. We always made a point of making Jesus first and foremost in the lives of our kids. We did not make a big deal of Santa, although I think they all believed for a while. It is something they just outgrew. (You can correct that if I am mistaken!) BTW my grandchildren reminded me last week that Santa always leaves the presents in our big bathtub, which is where we store them. (Yes, we do take showers.) No one has ever asked how he gets in there 🙂
When our kids got old enough to question Santa, we kept the myth alive in the spirit of belief. If you don’t believe, you don’t receive! I know some may say we are telling them to believe in something that doesn’t exists, and we may be jading their belief in Christ.
But the spirit of Santa myth is giving, in fact its giving to the entire world. Some may say its based in works, but we all know Santa gives regardless if you’ve been naughty or nice. I think its all in the way we tell the story…