I've tried to think of how to start this post, which I'm sure is bound to offend some. But I can't really come up with a clever way to do that, so I'mma just cut to the chase.
Can we please stop with all the Santa stuff?
Here are my top 4 reasons Santa should be nixed:
1. It's a big fat lie, and kids need to be able to trust their parents.
I have this burden for my kids. I want them to know that they can count on me to be
truthful. And it seems brutal to me to build up Santa knowing that one day, you will have to sit that
child down and tell her that it was all made up.
It was
all an elaborate scheme to have fun. All a big, dishonest production to
build up love and trust in someone that isn't real.
I
guess I just don't get it. How is it fun to watch our children trust
us while all the while we do everything we can to deceive them?
And why do need to lie to have fun?
2. It's all about getting.
Now, I'm not a grinch. I love Christmas. I love presents. One of the highlights of my year is sitting down and ordering presents each Christmas.
But I feel like most of the time Santa is just about the gimmes. No
one ever asks my kids what Santa will be giving to someone else. They
never ask my kids how they will bless someone else. No. It's always the
same question, "What's Santa going to bring you?"
3. The ubiquitous - it takes the focus off of Jesus.
I was helping set-up a party today where kids in need will come tomorrow to pick up presents that local church-goers have purchased for them. As I looked at the packages, some of the tags really annoyed me. They said, "From Santa."
What is the purpose of this? I happen to know some of the kids that are getting these presents, and my husband works closely with a handful of them. Some of these kids have never heard the story of Jesus' birth before last Wednesday. And now, 5 days later, they are being redirected to a totally fake thing that has nothing whatsoever to do with what Christmas is about.
4. He sets up a works-based acceptance plan where everyone earns their way in.
Santa actually is antithetical to what Christmas is about. Christmas is all about God reaching down and fixing a broken relationship completely out of His own grace. It's a reminder that we are a sinful people and we are powerless to overcome that. Yet the story of Santa says that not only are we supposed to earn it, we are also all good enough to earn it.
Did you know that 9 out of 10 adults think they would be on Santa's good list, assuming he was real? (There was an actual survey done that I heard about just this week, but I can't find a link. So... you can decide whether you want to believe me or not.) We ought to be teaching our kids that they can never get on the good list by their own merit, but "lucky" for them... they don't have to.... because of Jesus.
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