Christians & Santa

I can remember when I first heard it.  I was standing in my dorm room in Amsterdam while I was on a mission trip with the college campus ministry with which I was involved.  My roommate on the trip had grown up in a vastly different church world than I had.  He had come from a much more charismatic background.  I had been raised Southern Baptist, so we had both come from fairly conservative traditions.  I was on my way to becoming a United Methodist pastor as well.  But I'd never heard anything like it.  He told me that he would not be teaching his (yet unborn and unconceived) children about Santa Claus.  He said that it would confuse his children and that they might think he was lying to them about Jesus, too.  He said that it was a worldly idea and not what Christmas was about.  He said that right from the get-go he'd let his children know that there was no Santa Claus and that Christmas was about Jesus' birth, not some imaginary fat guy in a red suit.  He proclaimed that it does children a world of damage when parents make children think that a fairy tale is true.  Children will end up thinking Jesus is a fairy tale, too.  Same goes for the Easter Bunny and Tooth Fairy in his house.  I spent the next hour thanking my Heavenly Father that my roommate was not my dad.

This issue has become particularly poignant for us this year because my two oldest boys (7 and 9) are asking a lot of questions.  They've got friends whispering in their ear about Jolly Ol' St. Nick.  They're saying that some of their friends don't believe in Santa and that they think their parents put the presents out.  When they ask the right question or make the right comment, we'll have a good talk about it.  They're on the fence.  It's a curious time around the McInnis household, and more and more, I hear this conversation popping up among Christians.  And I want to be honest -- I don't get it.

I grew up in a house in which my parents just didn't make a big deal of things.  When an inappropriate scene came across a video, they fast-forwarded the VCR (remember those?!).  We went to parties or tailgates where people drank, a lot, and my parents simply chose not to drink at all instead of avoiding the gatherings.  My youth pastor would play secular music on the church bus and turn it down when a phrase came up that wasn't 'youth group friendly.'  That means he actually knew the songs.  And when I finally learned the truth about Santa and his reindeer... well, it just wasn't that big of a deal (except to the girl I broke the news to in Ms. Moon's 4th grade class.)  In fact, it was mind-boggling to me to realize that my parents had gone to all that trouble all those years to make Christmas special.  And Santa still came long after I'd gone to college.  It was just as special even after I 'knew.'

I never thought Jesus wasn't real because my parents lived Jesus.  We went to church every week, I saw them studying their Sunday School lesson, and saw our tithe check on the corner of the counter every Sunday morning.  Santa was a once a year deal.  It was fun.  I made lists and sent them to Santa because I was a kid.  And kids do fun things.  Kids dress up and say they're Batman.  Kids think they're going to play in the NFL when they're six.  Kids pretend to be princesses.  Kids think Lightnin' McQueen is a real car.

I fear that we have forgotten how to be fun as Christians.  We have an Elf on the Shelf because it's fun, but I remind my children all the time that God is always watching us, and our biggest motivation to behave and make good decisions is to please and honor God.  But for three weeks, the Elf (Russ, in our house) is fun.  Christians have different convictions.  Some people feel really strongly about Santa and anything secular at Christmas.  That's okay.  But I hope those Christians know how to have fun.  I think God smiles at good-natured fun.  Moreover, I think the world looks at us like we're weird and shuts the door on a conversation with us when we can't have fun.  Now, as Christ-Followers, we are weird.  We are ruled by radical hospitality and amazing grace, something strange to the rest of the world.  However, when we call 'everything' that didn't originate from the Church worldly, evil or "secular," outsiders begin to wonder if they can even be our friends.  It just seems to me that it's okay to have fun.  And I think kids like fun, and I think they understand the difference between fun and the Solid Rock upon which we have built our family.