What Should Christians Tell Their Children About Santa?

I don’t actually answer this question in this thread. I’ll leave that up to you. But I will say this. Over the last year I have personally changed my view on Santa Clause, namely, that Christian parents would do well to tell their kids the truth from the get-go. I didn’t come to these conclusions on my own but was challenged, and now after thinking it over some more I am more convinced than ever. These views are simply my own. I’m not going to expect others to believe as I do, and I’m not going to be legalistic about it. I’m simply going to share my thoughts and say I think there are some important things we need to re-consider.

I was listening to a Christian radio station in Seattle today, one I often find exhorting, and the host mentioned that his opinion on the matter is that we should tell our kids that Santa exists. He remembers the fun of it as a kid and doesn’t think other kids should miss out. He also had a balanced view in that we shouldn’t try to control our kids with the idea of Santa, hence, scaring them that he wont give them presents unless they behave, but should welcome it as a fun fantasy.

Here’s the big problems I now have with telling our kids that Santa Clause exists:

1. Santa Clause is a big distraction for adults, let alone children.

With belief in Santa Clause, it becomes embedded in children’s minds that Christmas is about presents, not God’s gift of himself entering into his own creation as promised in order to save man-kind from God’s own deserved eternal wrath upon us lawless sinners. And yes, small children do understand their own sinfulness, the concept of why God would punish sin, and the need for God to live a perfect life for us and die the death we deserve because we are sinful. We are especially sinful from youth, which is why I believe children understand the gospel so well at a young age.

I’ve heard kids articulate the gospel so powerfully in a few sentences  than preachers who have been doing it their entire lives. I’ve taught Sunday school many times. We made a man and a cross out of playdo. We raised our fists and pretended we were God as Judge, a perfect judge of lawless sin. We slammed our fists on the table to crush the cross instead of the man, so that the man could be free. I’ve seen it snap in their minds. But why would I all of a sudden then explain to them, “by the way, Santa is real. Behave good or you wont get presents. Class dismissed”.

Santa gives kids mixed messages about the holiday. It confuses them. It compartmentalizes the secular from the sacred. Kids are so busy being self-enticed with presents. They’re so busy believing that this nice, old, buddha-looking, red pajama wearing guy in the North Pole will shower them with gifts. In turn, they don’t have time for Christ. They mostly want their toys. Then we confuse them even more and give them Santa-Jesus whiplash. All of a sudden they’re forced to attend a tedious church service or read the belaboring nativity passage before opening gifts.

Jesus Christ is viewed as the boring part of Christmas. The God-stuff is the tedious part of Christmas, yet serves some mystical pious purpose that we haven’t really figured out yet. It’s there to self-assure our religiosity so that we can be self-indulging with toys guilt free. The God-stuff is our penance to the selfishness we’re about to commit. Kids become more excited and enticed with Santa than Christ, and all for the wrong reasons. Christ remains vague, boring, vainly repetitive, and Santa ends up beating him on the fun scale.

2. A child’s mind will confuse Santa with God.

Kids write to Santa as though he really exists. It’s almost similar to praying. They’re asking him for things as though he can hear them or communicate with them in a magical sense. How often do our kids pray to God? Are we teaching them to stay strong in their faith, regardless of toys and life going their way? It’s easy to want to contact Santa because he will give you what you want, which is absolutely not the Biblical worldview. The Biblical worldview is that God knows us perfectly, thus gives us exactly what we need, even when it’s painful sometimes.

Our kids wait up late for Santa to arrive. They are anxious to see him. They believe he exists and that he cares about them so much that he’s willing to actually visit their house. Santa specifically has them in mind. God did something for the “world”. How is that a gift to them directly? They don’t see it as something to them directly.

The kids leave out milk and cookies for him. But the parents secretly eat them to solidify the fun lie. There are gifts under the tree that say “from Santa” on them. It’s empirical proof to the kids that he “really” exists. But where’s the empirical proof of God? They don’t see his empirical proof anywhere.

When kids finally get to the age when they discover Santa Caluse isn’t real, what will they have gained from it all? What did you gain? Further, are they going to view God just as un-real because the lines have been blurred about who God and Santa are? We’re still drenched in the Age of Empericism. Esspecially with most colleges today. Do parents understand the inconsistency of this ideology? If not, once our kids are influenced to only accept things emperically, they may not only stop believing in Santa, but may develop doubts in God for similar reasons.

We make Santa out to be omniscient. We tell our kids that he is watching them and knows if they’ve been naughty or nice. A child’s mind can’t understand which one is really watching them. Is it God, or Santa? It almost diefies Santa and makes there become two gods. Santa will bless you only if you’re a moralist, and puff yourself up into thinking you’re an ideal child. So what if an ideal child is an ideal child and goes to hell some day? An ideal child is not ideal to God, because all are with sin. Are we explaining to our kids the reality of sin? Are we articulating the need for the sinner’s Savior, Jesus Christ? There’s a lot of people who are confused and think they are good people simply because they don’t know the gospel.

Santa may motivate them to “be good” for the wrong reasons. Striving to be good so that you’ll be rewarded is an enemy of the Biblical gospel. As C.S. Lewis rightly says, “God doesn’t love us because we are good, but because he loves us he will make us good”. Rom 5:9 says that “while we were still sinners (=hating God) Jesus Christ died for our sins”. The gospel is where the Judge gets down off of his judgment seat for a moment and gets tortured to death in our place, only to then get back on his judgment seat. This is an act of grace, not because we first loved him, but because he first loved us.

3. Santa and God are made out to be competitors.

Perhaps it once served its purposes that pagan holidays became Christianized in the time of emperor Constantine. Maybe back then it had some good purposes, or maybe it didn’t accomplish much. I don’t know. But looking at where we are today in modern U.S. society, kids are confused because of these mixtures. In fact, professing Christian adults are confused because of these mixtures, so how much more their children?!

During Easter time, kids get mixed messages about some weird silly bunny who is maybe a distant relative of Santa because it likes to give candy and presents too. So when Easter time comes around we celebrate… huh… rabbits? I don’t know. But I do know that kids are excited about this weird silly bunny simply because it gives candy. It could just as well be an arbitrary three-fingered-sloth that gives birth to chocolate offspring. Kids don’t care. They just like candy and are so thankful for the invisible Easter bunny, yet don’t know how to be thankful for Christ’s power. The bunny is in the here and now, but the risen Christ is distant and in heaven.

During Easter, Jesus is arbitrarily coming back from the dead instead of arbitrarily being born. And he’s risen for some vague reason that we’re supposed to think is significant, but can’t put our finger on because it also has become a vain repetition. Kids are left scratching their head, and we naively think we understand the Resurrection and that our kids do to because we attend a church service on it every year. We’re only fooling ourselves.

And so it goes with Santa. Instead of Christ being the center of Christmas by us being in awe of God becoming vulnerable to save us, we make it that time of year we get to become spoiled present-pimps. We lavish our kids with toys that Santa got them, thus he wins. Jesus is just the baby in the manger and he can’t give us gifts. He’s just an annoying poor baby that is pooping his pants, but Santa is a nice pimp actively spoiling us. similarly, the kids are thankful for Santa, but don’t know how to be thankful that God entered his own creation to save it by being born.

From a kid’s angle, Santa is blessing them in the here and now, but what Jesus did was so long ago and it’s confusing why that really matters now. Who gave the better gift, Santa or God? Kids are told they’re supposed to think it was God, but deep down a child thinks it was Santa. Santa is more colorful. He gives us our favorite toys every year. God doesn’t do that. So kids think Santa is nicer than God.

Conclusion

The Biblical worldview is that an understanding of Christ is infused into everything we know and do. He causes everything to have beauty, meaning, purpose, relationship, and truth in some way that is amazing. On a side note, this is why we originally called colleges “universities”, because like the Trinity, there is unity within all the diversity around us. Things aren’t supposed to be as compartmentalized as we’ve made them.

The mindset should be that Christ accounts for math, history, science, philosophy, fun, and truth. He is the one it all points to in the end. But our colleges and intolerant “public” schools compartmentalize the secular from the sacred. Once we finally see past the lies, we’ll realize that it’s all sacred. We’re brain-washed to think that math is over here. Science is over here. History is over here. But God is over there. We’re so foolish.

And it’s no wonder that kids have this compartmentalized view of God when they grow up. We breed it into them from youth. Santa is over here. God is over there. Santa wants to give you toys. But a God-baby can’t hear you. Fun is over here. Toys are over here. But God is way over there. No, God is in it all.

By the time next Christmas rolls around, kids have already forgotten about last years toys. But what is their understanding of Christ? Has it increased at all? Is Santa getting in the way of our kid’s understanding Christ? Is a traditional lie that we tell them for 8 years really that important? I personally believe this holiday is more dangerous than we think because of the mixtures, but that the lie is even more dangerous.

Don’t get me wrong. I promised I wouldn’t be legalistic about it. I’m not intimidated by it. I just think there’s a bigger picture that we don’t consider too often. I think that when we trick our kids for 8 years to believe in Santa, we’re actually creating more work for ourselves that we will later have to undo. If we want them to be Christ-minded from the start, why are we working against ourselves?

What is a practical way to go about it?

In a practical sense, I think this is a cool way to have Christmas with our children. Use it as a means to explain the gospel to their young minds. Start by telling them about their specific sins. God doesn’t first require them to be “good”. Even though they disobey, are selfish, and deserve spankings or time-outs, God will love them anyways.

But he only loves them through Jesus Christ because Jesus lived the perfect life for us and took the punishment we deserve. In this sense, Jesus is way better than Santa. If Santa were God then Santa would never give anyone gifts because he requires you to be good. Even though no one is as perfect as Jesus is, Jesus chooses to love us anyways. Then we can give our children their favorite toys and show them that this is how God treats us even when we disobeyed him. And we are to treat others the same way since God has first treated us this way.

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