No Santa?!

      "You're not going to do Santa with your child? What's wrong with you? Your poor baby is going to miss out!" No, I am not going to do Santa with my children. Ryan and I decided during Christmas 2009, while I was pregnant with Rylee, we would not do Santa at Christmas with our children. Of course, I am going to tell her the story of Saint Nicholas, and allow her to watch cute little Christmas movies and such that include Santa, but we are not going to do the whole pretending that gifts come from the north pole deal.

       "Why not?" We just don't feel it's right for our family. We feel that most of the time children, and adults for that matter, miss the point of Christmas. Even though it is not Jesus's actual birthday, it is the day of the year we have designated to celebrate his birth. We want to try to keep the focus on that as much as possible. Of course, we are going to give our babies lots of gifts, but our gifts can never match the gift that was given all those years ago in Bethlehem. We also don't want to lie to her and have her develop a sense of mistrust. If she can't believe us about Santa, can she believe us when we tell er about Jesus Christ and about God? She's never seen them either... I just don't want to give her a reason to doubt. I also don't want her to feel like she can ever do anything to earn or lose God's love. The whole Naughty and Nice list thing throws me off. No one can ever be "good" enough to earn their way into heaven. It's by grace alone. If she asks about Santa, I'm going to tell her the truth, and stress to her why it's important not to hurt anyone's feelings by telling them what she knows.

       "Isn't she going to be missing out?" Absolutely not! She still gets PLENTY of gifts. We have our own family traditions to make the Christmas season special. We make a birthday cake for Jesus. We pick out gifts for needy children. We talk about the miracle of Jesus's birth. We spend tons of time with all the people we love. Christmas is such an amazing time of year, why do we need a fictional character to make it better? For our family, it is a great time of year without him. We have friends and family who do celebrate Christmas using Santa, and that's fine. That's their choice for their family. Their kids enjoy it, and it's all well and good, but it is just not a part of Christmas for our family, and that's okay, too.