I had an interesting conversation today with a co-worker about whether or not Christians should teach their children about Santa. Already, so many believe that CHRIST is already being taken out of Christmas as the holiday becomes more and more commercialized.
Steve and I haven't had to address this issue yet with Amaya, but it will come up at some point, just like the Tooth Fairy, the Easter Bunny, etc. My concern is the danger when encouraging children to believe that Santa Claus is real, is that you are asking them to build their trust in something you know they will find out at a later time isn't true. If you tell them a lie about this, you may wonder why they start doubting other things you teach them - especially about God. The child thinks, “They told me Santa was real and that's not true; maybe what they told me about God isn't true either.”
I grew up with Santa as a very small part of the Christmas celebration. Santa - aka my mom - would leave us a stocking full of goodies and on Christmas morning there would be a few presents from Santa. I was never told that Santa was real and I don't remember if I ever believed that he was real. Besides, how can my mom and Santa's handwriting be EXACTLY the same? Sure, we had our pictures taken with Santa, but now I'm starting to wonder if that's even a good thing anymore. We teach our children to be wary of strangers, yet we want to take a picture of them on a stranger's lap?!? Does that make sense?
One of my favorite Christmas movies is Prancer. "Jessica, the daughter of an impoverished apple farmer, still believes in Santa Claus. So when she comes across a reindeer with an injured leg, it makes perfect sense to her to assume that it is Prancer, who had fallen from a Christmas display in town. She hides the reindeer in her barn and feeds it cookies, until she can return it to Santa." (excerpt taken from IMBD). This young girl has this wide-eyed wonderment of Christmas: preparing Christmas cookies, decorating her room, singing Christmas Carols. This is what I want for Amaya. I want her to eagerly anticipate Christmas. I want her to have that same excitement and wonderment. The only difference is that I want her to have the excitement of celebrating Christ's birth, not Santa's arrival.
I guess what it all comes down to is if the traditions in our household can't teach about Jesus Christ, we need to rethink our traditions. Thoughts?