I love Christmas, the entire season. Not the presents so much, but the Christmas Spirit: The music, decorations, traditions, and the closeness it fosters! I’ve even been know to play my Pandora Christmas station in Spring and Summer, or whenever I need a gleeful boost!
The one thing that bothers me about my all time favorite season is its focus.
Lately DH and I have been watching tons of Christmas movies on the Hallmark Channel. Yes, most of them are corny. Yes, they mostly have the same story lines and are extremely predictable, but hey they are Christmas movies!
Since moving to Atlanta in 2009, both Greg and I have grown tremendously in our faith. It’s as if the blinders have been lifted and we see the world in a completely different way.
One night DH pointed out the way faith in Santa is explained to children in the movies. It is exactly the same way we are taught and should have faith is Jesus . . . our Savior. I also googled the similarities of Jesus and Santa. It’s almost scary.
No, it IS scary.
We hammer the belief of Santa into our little ones, we make it fun, magical and enticing.
It’s ironic to me that the celebration of the birth of Jesus has been over shadowed by a figure or symbol that many children feel closer to and have more faith in than God himself (much like Easter and the Easter bunny).
Needless to say DH and I are torn. We want nothing more than to (with Gods help) teach our son to know and love the Lord. In our home Christmas will be about Jesus . . .we don’t want to waste our son’s “child like faith” on an imaginary being. We have even considered celebrating Hanukkah in addition to Christmas, but from a Christian point of view.
{Hanukkah is a holiday that celebrates Gods faithfulness and we as Christians light the candles to symbolize Jesus as the eternal light.}(Hebrew4Christians is a great resource for Christian families that want to learn about the biblical holidays and there significance to us)
How We plan to focus on Jesus during the Christmas Season
Here are a few fun ideas that turn the focus back to Jesus. Hopefully these will be integrated into our family traditions once little man is here and old enough 🙂
- Baking birthday day cookies or cake for Jesus (instead of leaving cookies for Santa)
- Making birthday cards for Jesus (instead of writing a list to Santa)
- Reading the Christmas Story based on the bible (instead of The Night Before Christmas)
- Writing a list of what we want to get for others instead of ourselves
The Birth if Jesus, regardless of if it actually occurred on December 25th or not, is the greatest
gift to all mankind. His birth should be celebrated, It should not be shoved in the background and over shadowed.
It’s as if we have all been tricked.
Both Greg and I want the Christmas season to be fun, we want don’t want our son to be a little adult.
So my question is . . .
Is There Harm in Believing in Santa?
Could it be harmful in the long run, once our son finds out that Santa was all a happy made up story? Could that in some way affect his faith in Jesus? Could that affect his trust in us as parents?
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