Allow me to explain. But, first, my very necessary disclaimers.
1. We aren't accusing anyone of bad parenting. Our own parents, especially. This is my most important disclaimer. We have no resentment for the Baby Boomers who raised us. For a short time, my parents told me Santa was real and, when it came time to figure out the truth, it worked itself out. I don't believe it marred my childhood in any way-- it was pretty cool to walk into the den on Christmas morning and find it had filled with gifts overnight.
I'm writing this blog post because Santa is not as simple as he used to be. He was harmless for the Baby Boomers and perhaps for the Millennials, but he won't be so uncomplicated for our children. Santa is one of the many things that were purely innocent in a world before AOL.
I'll explain shortly why I'm placing blame on the culturally-irrelevant shoulders of America Online 4.0.
2. We aren't actually trying to change your mind. This blog post is the result of years of deep thought and long conversations. It is purely for the sake of explaining my ideas and perhaps sparking a bit of dialogue about something that most people don't consider to be a parenting decision at all-- just something that you do. I did not come by these opinions lightly and I trust that you will make your own decisions with your own reasoning, based on what you know to be best for your own family. We respect that.
3. We aren't trying to be Santa-abolitionists. We do solemnly swear not to be "those parents" who are so anti-Santa that the very existence of a Father Christmas character in the school play strikes ire into their Grinchy hearts.
We believe that some things are still Santa-benign and we will freely allow our children to enjoy that part of the American Christmas experience.
This includes:
-making Santa crafts in school (I want a cotton-ball bearded Santa for my fridge and glitter that sticks to the carpet until spring. Mommy wants it real' bad.)
-singing secular Christmas songs (We will continue to jingle and we will do it all the way.)
-winning the coveted role of Mr. or Mrs. Claus in a Christmas play (My misplaced pride and ambition know no boundaries.)
- being creeped out by giant Santa inflatables in the neighbor's yard (That's right. I said it.)
- watching Christmas movies-- perhaps even The Santa Claus, which blatantly tells children not to listen to the jaded adults who don't believe. (I'm going to tell myself that won't throw a wrench in my master Santa plan. So, maybe not... Thanks for that, Tim Allen. To inconsistency and beyond.)
So, with all that in mind, let's take off our Santa-colored glasses and set aside all the fuzzy feelings we may have. I'm going to find other ways to make childhood magical for my kids, like letting the three wise men wander around the house looking for baby Jesus, but my husband and I won't be telling them that Santa Claus is real. Here's why:
1. At the heart of Christmas, there is an object of blind faith-- but it's not Santa.
I never want my children to be told that belief in Jesus, like belief in Santa, is something to grow out of.
And here's where the Internet is to blame. The fact is, my kids almost certainly will be told that only children-- or childish people-- believe in Jesus. I was told this. Santa did not mar my childhood, but being told by a stranger on the Internet that I was an idiot for having faith in God absolutely did. I would go so far as to say that that moment was the final nail in my childhood's coffin. It was the beginning of a long journey of doubt, rediscovery and, eventually, healing.
Our parents did not have the same access to so many opinions-- in the Deep South, if they met a vocal atheist, he was probably the angry kid who sat by himself in every class and clearly had an unhappy home life. His pessimistic opinion on life after death wasn't threatening because it felt so isolated, foreign, and attention-seekingly unhappy. You just didn't vocalize your struggles with faith the way we do now.
Now, even if we place very strict parental controls on our web browsers, our children will be able to see an infinite number of trollish, anti-religious comments at the bottom of any given web page, whether it had anything to do with religion or not. The only place of communion the typical atheist has is online, where everyone who has lost their taste for faith is free to gather. Having this access creates the illusion that everyone in the world is "enlightened" and "intellectually liberated, " but you, little Christian kid, are the last stupid person on earth.
If my children ever believe that they need to out-grow Jesus, I've done something wrong. The person of Jesus Christ, the miracle of His birth, is the only object of blind faith in Christmas. My list goes on, but this is the most important reason why I reject the Santa conspiracy. (I'm using my hyperbole font. Can you see it?) It's not good enough to say that Jesus is the reason for the season. We must make Him the one and only real reason. He must not be usurped by another figure who receives greater reinforcement by our secular society.
That leads me to...
2. Our society no longer aids us in raising Christian children, so we cannot waste our faith capital on anything else.
There is very little that we can ask our children to just trust us on. Everything else we'll teach them has concrete consequences. Don't touch the stove, you'll burn yourself. Don't be mean, you'll lose your friends. Don't gossip, you'll ruin someone's reputation (and eventually know what that feels like yourself.)
We have virtually no concrete evidence that Jesus existed and no concrete evidence at all that He is the Son of God. We cannot waste this window of opportunity on a figure that we will eventually dismantle. If I want my children to trust me when I say, "You can believe in God, even though you can't see Him," then I can't sabotage myself by saying, "Yeah, that equally improbable guy called Santa Claus... about that..."
What's more, we don't just face the challenge of raising faith-filled children in the absence of hard evidence. We have a very powerful cultural love of Santa which reinforces that one, not the other, is real. If you take your children on a walk in any mall, which one will they see more of, Santa or Jesus? This is another challenge our parents did not face, before it was politically incorrect to say, "Merry Christmas." If left to its own devices, the big, bad world would lead our children to believe in Santa and literally nothing else. (Think about that. Literally nothing else.)
I feel like 50% of my faith education was damage control because I was being told left-and-right that faith is foolish. Our children will eventually have to decide for themselves if they want to carry on with the faith we've given them. One day, they'll make the decision: I do believe in God or I do not believe in God. Until then, I do not want to waste my children's trust on a fabrication.
Next, a problem that may or may not be culture-specific...
3. How do you thank Santa?
This may be a greater problem in the South than in other parts of the country. Everyone wants to raise a grateful child, but the South places particular emphasis on the importance of "please" and "thank you." Children everywhere write beg-letters to Santa (hyperbole font again) but who writes a thank-you note? I know I didn't.
But, I did write a thank-you note to my grandparents because my parents wanted me to learn that my material blessings had a source.
The fact is, a disembodied gift-giver is hard to thank. Teaching our children how to be grateful is an ongoing process. When they're very little, we just ask, "What do you say?" and follow it up with, "Go give Grandpa a hug!" The real experience of gratitude is something that has to be cultivated and taught. But, in their most formative years, children are let off the hook. They receive a pile of presents and we expect them to be grateful, but we don't have anyone for them to tell, "thank you."
Does this sound familiar at all? As an adult, did you remember today, yesterday, every single day to thank God for your blessings, material and immaterial? Oops. Now you do.
Problem 3.B.: Why create a false middle-man?
Even if your parents did take into account the thank-you problem, why did you waste your time thanking someone who isn't real? Sending book-end "please" and "thank you" notes to Santa does not cover your bases. Don't give Santa credit for anything and don't tell yourself that it's good enough because "at least they're learning to be thankful."
Santa stands in the way of one of the biggest challenges to raising Christian children. He's a distraction from the true source of everything we have to be thankful for. We have to counter-balance our natural tendency to receive and want moremoremore before we have the opportunity to be thankful for what we've already been given. Teaching true gratitude is an uphill battle from day one. So my plan is to skip the bull and jump right into the life-long challenge of imbibing my children with the spirit of continual thanksgiving to God. (And be prepared to fail because that's truly a matter of God's grace.)
4. For the logic-minded child, Santa is confusing. For the whimsy-minded child, he's a contradiction.
In addition to our negative tendency to greediness and ingratitude, we also have a very positive compulsion to make sense of life's mysteries. I recently asked my friends how they resolved the problems in the Santa story.
"How did he carry so many presents in his sleigh?"
"It was a bottomless sleigh, like Hermione's purse."
"How did he get to every home in one night?"
"He could stop time."
"How did he eat so many cookies?"
"He's fat." and "My mom was a dietitian. We put out carrot sticks."
Most children are both logical and whimsical. They want to make sense of a fantasy, so they patch up the plot holes with more fantastical reasoning. I wasn't that creative as a child, so I spent every Christmas Eve night trying to put together the pieces. When it didn't fit together, doubt set in, and I came to my own conclusion, as most children do at an appropriate age.
So, why does the whimsy-minded child sustain the fantasy longer than the logic-minded child? Well, obviously it's because their parents never told them that magic isn't real.
Yeah, I caught that parenting contradiction. When my parents told me that cartoon characters only exist inside the TV, I rolled with it. When they told me about Santa, I rolled with it... until I got frustrated when none of my reality-based explanations worked out.
This reason may seem trivial, but I never want to contradict myself and I never want to discourage my children from following their desire to make sense of the world. A child who exercises critical thinking skills from that age should be rewarded with the sense of satisfaction we feel when our curiosity and confusion is met with answers that make sense.
Saying, "It's magic," is a cop-out response that cuts short the problem-solving process and elaborates the story. If you answer with anything more detailed, you're adding realism to a lie that you have to undo and almost certainly making the let-down harder when it finally comes. I don't want the Santa story to make sense at the expense of other essential parenting decisions, like explaining that real life = real life and make-believe = make-believe.
5. Arguable point: Santa adds to the materialism of Christmas.
I say that this is an arguable point because I do believe that parents can counteract some of this. So, #5 is really just a statement of inevitability. As I said before, children can be selfish, greedy, and ungrateful. But, doesn't that sound like a lot of adults you know, too?
The fact is, whether we tell children that Santa is real or make-believe, they're still going to be itching to get out of church on Christmas morning so they can go open their presents. Why burden a child's forming conscience with the very appealing distraction of PRESENT-MAN? When did Jesus ever give me a new bike? When you allow kids to be distracted by Santa, bringer of Xboxes, materialism happens. All Jesus ever gave me was eternal salvation. Pfft.
And finally, I've saved the best for last. May I present...
6. THE CATHOLIC DOOZY: If your whimsy-minded child never stops believing on their own, when do you tell them the truth about Santa?
That's an important decision for a lot of parents to make. Do we tell them when they're 5 or 6 and only give them a few short years of Santa? Or do we tell them when they're 9 or 10 and let them enjoy the ride as long as possible?
The age of reason is seven. Seven years of age. It occurred to me with great horror that, on Christmas morning, some children will receive the Eucharist-- truth itself, God's presence on earth, the most welcoming door to eternal life-- and then go home to receive presents from a fairy tale.
1. We aren't accusing anyone of bad parenting. Our own parents, especially. This is my most important disclaimer. We have no resentment for the Baby Boomers who raised us. For a short time, my parents told me Santa was real and, when it came time to figure out the truth, it worked itself out. I don't believe it marred my childhood in any way-- it was pretty cool to walk into the den on Christmas morning and find it had filled with gifts overnight.
I'm writing this blog post because Santa is not as simple as he used to be. He was harmless for the Baby Boomers and perhaps for the Millennials, but he won't be so uncomplicated for our children. Santa is one of the many things that were purely innocent in a world before AOL.
I'll explain shortly why I'm placing blame on the culturally-irrelevant shoulders of America Online 4.0.
 |
| The real villain here |
2. We aren't actually trying to change your mind. This blog post is the result of years of deep thought and long conversations. It is purely for the sake of explaining my ideas and perhaps sparking a bit of dialogue about something that most people don't consider to be a parenting decision at all-- just something that you do. I did not come by these opinions lightly and I trust that you will make your own decisions with your own reasoning, based on what you know to be best for your own family. We respect that.
3. We aren't trying to be Santa-abolitionists. We do solemnly swear not to be "those parents" who are so anti-Santa that the very existence of a Father Christmas character in the school play strikes ire into their Grinchy hearts.
We believe that some things are still Santa-benign and we will freely allow our children to enjoy that part of the American Christmas experience.
This includes:
-making Santa crafts in school (I want a cotton-ball bearded Santa for my fridge and glitter that sticks to the carpet until spring. Mommy wants it real' bad.)
-singing secular Christmas songs (We will continue to jingle and we will do it all the way.)
-winning the coveted role of Mr. or Mrs. Claus in a Christmas play (My misplaced pride and ambition know no boundaries.)
- being creeped out by giant Santa inflatables in the neighbor's yard (That's right. I said it.)
- watching Christmas movies-- perhaps even The Santa Claus, which blatantly tells children not to listen to the jaded adults who don't believe. (I'm going to tell myself that won't throw a wrench in my master Santa plan. So, maybe not... Thanks for that, Tim Allen. To inconsistency and beyond.)
So, with all that in mind, let's take off our Santa-colored glasses and set aside all the fuzzy feelings we may have. I'm going to find other ways to make childhood magical for my kids, like letting the three wise men wander around the house looking for baby Jesus, but my husband and I won't be telling them that Santa Claus is real. Here's why:
1. At the heart of Christmas, there is an object of blind faith-- but it's not Santa.
I never want my children to be told that belief in Jesus, like belief in Santa, is something to grow out of.
And here's where the Internet is to blame. The fact is, my kids almost certainly will be told that only children-- or childish people-- believe in Jesus. I was told this. Santa did not mar my childhood, but being told by a stranger on the Internet that I was an idiot for having faith in God absolutely did. I would go so far as to say that that moment was the final nail in my childhood's coffin. It was the beginning of a long journey of doubt, rediscovery and, eventually, healing.
Our parents did not have the same access to so many opinions-- in the Deep South, if they met a vocal atheist, he was probably the angry kid who sat by himself in every class and clearly had an unhappy home life. His pessimistic opinion on life after death wasn't threatening because it felt so isolated, foreign, and attention-seekingly unhappy. You just didn't vocalize your struggles with faith the way we do now.
Now, even if we place very strict parental controls on our web browsers, our children will be able to see an infinite number of trollish, anti-religious comments at the bottom of any given web page, whether it had anything to do with religion or not. The only place of communion the typical atheist has is online, where everyone who has lost their taste for faith is free to gather. Having this access creates the illusion that everyone in the world is "enlightened" and "intellectually liberated, " but you, little Christian kid, are the last stupid person on earth.
If my children ever believe that they need to out-grow Jesus, I've done something wrong. The person of Jesus Christ, the miracle of His birth, is the only object of blind faith in Christmas. My list goes on, but this is the most important reason why I reject the Santa conspiracy. (I'm using my hyperbole font. Can you see it?) It's not good enough to say that Jesus is the reason for the season. We must make Him the one and only real reason. He must not be usurped by another figure who receives greater reinforcement by our secular society.
That leads me to...
2. Our society no longer aids us in raising Christian children, so we cannot waste our faith capital on anything else.
There is very little that we can ask our children to just trust us on. Everything else we'll teach them has concrete consequences. Don't touch the stove, you'll burn yourself. Don't be mean, you'll lose your friends. Don't gossip, you'll ruin someone's reputation (and eventually know what that feels like yourself.)
We have virtually no concrete evidence that Jesus existed and no concrete evidence at all that He is the Son of God. We cannot waste this window of opportunity on a figure that we will eventually dismantle. If I want my children to trust me when I say, "You can believe in God, even though you can't see Him," then I can't sabotage myself by saying, "Yeah, that equally improbable guy called Santa Claus... about that..."
What's more, we don't just face the challenge of raising faith-filled children in the absence of hard evidence. We have a very powerful cultural love of Santa which reinforces that one, not the other, is real. If you take your children on a walk in any mall, which one will they see more of, Santa or Jesus? This is another challenge our parents did not face, before it was politically incorrect to say, "Merry Christmas." If left to its own devices, the big, bad world would lead our children to believe in Santa and literally nothing else. (Think about that. Literally nothing else.)
I feel like 50% of my faith education was damage control because I was being told left-and-right that faith is foolish. Our children will eventually have to decide for themselves if they want to carry on with the faith we've given them. One day, they'll make the decision: I do believe in God or I do not believe in God. Until then, I do not want to waste my children's trust on a fabrication.
Next, a problem that may or may not be culture-specific...
3. How do you thank Santa?
This may be a greater problem in the South than in other parts of the country. Everyone wants to raise a grateful child, but the South places particular emphasis on the importance of "please" and "thank you." Children everywhere write beg-letters to Santa (hyperbole font again) but who writes a thank-you note? I know I didn't.
But, I did write a thank-you note to my grandparents because my parents wanted me to learn that my material blessings had a source.
The fact is, a disembodied gift-giver is hard to thank. Teaching our children how to be grateful is an ongoing process. When they're very little, we just ask, "What do you say?" and follow it up with, "Go give Grandpa a hug!" The real experience of gratitude is something that has to be cultivated and taught. But, in their most formative years, children are let off the hook. They receive a pile of presents and we expect them to be grateful, but we don't have anyone for them to tell, "thank you."
Does this sound familiar at all? As an adult, did you remember today, yesterday, every single day to thank God for your blessings, material and immaterial? Oops. Now you do.
Problem 3.B.: Why create a false middle-man?
Even if your parents did take into account the thank-you problem, why did you waste your time thanking someone who isn't real? Sending book-end "please" and "thank you" notes to Santa does not cover your bases. Don't give Santa credit for anything and don't tell yourself that it's good enough because "at least they're learning to be thankful."
Santa stands in the way of one of the biggest challenges to raising Christian children. He's a distraction from the true source of everything we have to be thankful for. We have to counter-balance our natural tendency to receive and want moremoremore before we have the opportunity to be thankful for what we've already been given. Teaching true gratitude is an uphill battle from day one. So my plan is to skip the bull and jump right into the life-long challenge of imbibing my children with the spirit of continual thanksgiving to God. (And be prepared to fail because that's truly a matter of God's grace.)
4. For the logic-minded child, Santa is confusing. For the whimsy-minded child, he's a contradiction.
In addition to our negative tendency to greediness and ingratitude, we also have a very positive compulsion to make sense of life's mysteries. I recently asked my friends how they resolved the problems in the Santa story.
"How did he carry so many presents in his sleigh?"
"It was a bottomless sleigh, like Hermione's purse."
"How did he get to every home in one night?"
"He could stop time."
"How did he eat so many cookies?"
"He's fat." and "My mom was a dietitian. We put out carrot sticks."
Most children are both logical and whimsical. They want to make sense of a fantasy, so they patch up the plot holes with more fantastical reasoning. I wasn't that creative as a child, so I spent every Christmas Eve night trying to put together the pieces. When it didn't fit together, doubt set in, and I came to my own conclusion, as most children do at an appropriate age.
So, why does the whimsy-minded child sustain the fantasy longer than the logic-minded child? Well, obviously it's because their parents never told them that magic isn't real.
Yeah, I caught that parenting contradiction. When my parents told me that cartoon characters only exist inside the TV, I rolled with it. When they told me about Santa, I rolled with it... until I got frustrated when none of my reality-based explanations worked out.
This reason may seem trivial, but I never want to contradict myself and I never want to discourage my children from following their desire to make sense of the world. A child who exercises critical thinking skills from that age should be rewarded with the sense of satisfaction we feel when our curiosity and confusion is met with answers that make sense.
Saying, "It's magic," is a cop-out response that cuts short the problem-solving process and elaborates the story. If you answer with anything more detailed, you're adding realism to a lie that you have to undo and almost certainly making the let-down harder when it finally comes. I don't want the Santa story to make sense at the expense of other essential parenting decisions, like explaining that real life = real life and make-believe = make-believe.
5. Arguable point: Santa adds to the materialism of Christmas.
I say that this is an arguable point because I do believe that parents can counteract some of this. So, #5 is really just a statement of inevitability. As I said before, children can be selfish, greedy, and ungrateful. But, doesn't that sound like a lot of adults you know, too?
The fact is, whether we tell children that Santa is real or make-believe, they're still going to be itching to get out of church on Christmas morning so they can go open their presents. Why burden a child's forming conscience with the very appealing distraction of PRESENT-MAN? When did Jesus ever give me a new bike? When you allow kids to be distracted by Santa, bringer of Xboxes, materialism happens. All Jesus ever gave me was eternal salvation. Pfft.
And finally, I've saved the best for last. May I present...
6. THE CATHOLIC DOOZY: If your whimsy-minded child never stops believing on their own, when do you tell them the truth about Santa?
That's an important decision for a lot of parents to make. Do we tell them when they're 5 or 6 and only give them a few short years of Santa? Or do we tell them when they're 9 or 10 and let them enjoy the ride as long as possible?
The age of reason is seven. Seven years of age. It occurred to me with great horror that, on Christmas morning, some children will receive the Eucharist-- truth itself, God's presence on earth, the most welcoming door to eternal life-- and then go home to receive presents from a fairy tale.
THAT IS NOT OKAY.
At what age are children old enough to receive the body and blood, soul and divinity of our Lord, Jesus Christ, but too young to spoil the magic of Santa?
Trick question. That age does not exist. In this way, Jesus and Santa cannot peacefully coexist.
Of course, the easy fix to this doozy is to tell them the Christmas before their First Communion.
Or maybe... just don't make Santa real in the first place. Because, the truth of the Eucharist exists before they receive Him for the first time. It will continue to exist if they decide to stop going to Mass when they leave for college. It will always exist and Santa never will.
Truth has value and we decide how strong it is for our children. If we make it a weak, amorphous concept with our contradictions and let-downs, truth won't have much meaning. But, if we treat it as fragile and respect its worth, it won't matter that Santa is easier to believe in than the Eucharist.
We might just save ourselves a few challenges in raising good Christians and, more specifically, good Catholics.
 |
| Or maybe we'll just be thieves of joy. |
No comments:
Post a Comment