Jason and I have had a few conversations this season about how to explain Christmas and all its meaning and traditions to our kids. Our first priority is to focus our celebrations on Christ and the Incarnation, and that’s not really the hard part. Admittedly, it is sometimes difficult to keep our focus on Christ and we don’t do it perfectly all the time (and that’s really no different in this season than in any other time of the year), but my point is that we don’t wonder how or what to tell our kids about what we believe about Jesus’ birth and the reason we celebrate Advent.
What we do wonder about is what, if anything, to do about Santa Claus. It hadn’t even occurred to me that we would eventually have to make a decision about this until a friend posed a query on Facebook just asking for input about how other people handle it (hers is a non-Santa home, and her question was whether or not to teach her kids to not “spoil it” for those who do the whole Santa thing). I enjoyed the whole discussion, as I love hearing other people’s traditions (and I especially loved the comment “I tell my kids that if you rearrange the letters in Santa you can spell Satan. That should tell you all you need to know”).
Jason found an article that pretty much sums up what we both think. (Short version if you don’t want to read the article: redeem the idea of Santa by teaching your kids about the real person Saint Nicholas.) And Simon (true story) got a hold of my iPhone and completely on his own found the Veggie Tales Saint Nicholas movie streaming on Netflix, so now he watches that at least daily (on the tv, not the iPhone).
I don’t imagine this will ever be a big deal for us: I don’t think either one of us ever believed in the North Pole Santa and all that, and we really have no intention of playing it up for our kids in any way. I suppose we might have to talk in a couple of years about how to approach the pervasiveness of Santa in the culture and the whole question of what to say (or not to say?) to other kids who might believe.
In any case, it’s certainly looking like we have a pass this year. When we’re shopping, say at Target, Simon points out trees and decorations as “Christmas.” Out of curiosity, I grabbed a figurine of Santa and asked Simon who it was, and he said, “I not know.” Another time a guy walked past us in a parking lot and asked Simon if he was “ready for Santa,” and, of course, Simon just kind of looked at him blankly. I simply said, “I don’t think he knows who Santa is yet.”
I did realize, though, as I checked at seven (yes, seven) stores before finally settling (and I do mean settling) on a Christmas stocking for Ian, that I’m not ready to do away with Saint Nick altogether. After all, I really did want that silly stocking! Still, when our ever-literal two-year-old put on one of the stockings last night and I tried to explain to him that they’re not that kind of stockings, I really couldn’t bring myself to say “Santa puts gifts in the stockings.” I just said, “On Christmas morning, you’ll find gifts in there.” I think our take on that will be that the gifts come from us and that the tradition of hanging stockings comes from the story of Saint Nicholas.
And lest you think that Simon trying on the Christmas stockings was a purely sweet and innocent moment, here are a couple of pictures that tell the rest of the story (he could not abide the fact that they didn’t fit right). Just keeping it real here.
River and Simon’s friendship is delightful to me. It has not been without its ups and downs, but I’m loving how these two are figuring it out and really, genuinely like each other (and it doesn’t hurt that I like his mama an awful lot too). Sometimes they fight (they are two and three, after all), but more often these days they work together. The incident with this straw made me laugh until I had tears in my eyes.
And these two are a whole lot of fun (and probably trouble) waiting to happen too.
