How We Do Christmas – Why St. Nick Will Not Be Stopping at The Thomas Home
Santa Clause will not be bringing any gifts to our children this year. This will be no surprise to our children because he never came in the past either.
If you take a look though our family photo albums you will see lots of toys every year and plenty of pictures of happy kids opening them. So if Santa did not bring them who did?
Their parents did. That’s who.
I understand why other parents choose a different route. They remember praying to some man in the North Pole who built toys with his physically-challenged, indentured servants. They remember how the kids learned to put their hope in and give all glory to that same figure around the holidays.
We decided that we were not going to do that and here is why.
- As Christians, we do not want to perpetuate a multi-year lie to our children. It’s just not something we want to do.
- Christmas time is a great time of year to show your kids in a practical way that you love them and care about their desires. Remember that whole lump of coal thing? Manipulation. We have told our kids that they are going to get presents no matter how they act because we love them, but we would sure appreciate better behavior. And on Christmas morning they are going to be thanking their parents for the gifts.
- We don’t want them praying to anyone other than Jesus. “No gods before me” is on God’s top 10 list.
- We believe in the supernatural. We want our kids to believe us about the supernatural. If an unseen Santa who brought gifts you can see is not real why should they believe in an unseen Savior whose gifts are unseen?
I know Spirit-filled families who do other things. More power to ya.
But if our kids tell your kids that you are lieing to them, don’t be mad at me. We told the truth.
