As the Christmas/holiday/yuletide/etc. season is quickly, post-Thanksgiving thrust upon us, a respected friend wrote about her family’s chosen approach in teaching their kids the meaning of this season. Her approach is not necessarily the Intramuralist’s approach. Still, I found her thoughts insightful, challenging, and at the very least, reasonable to wrestle with…
We don’t “do” Santa in our home. Or the Easter Bunny or the Tooth Fairy. Some may gasp in dismay as they feel like we are robbing our children of the magic and fun of being a child and believing in such things. And these are also the ones who gasp and become offended when we share why we have chosen not to do what most of our society does.
Simply put, we don’t want to lie to our kids. “It’s not lying,” some will assert… “It’s pretending. It’s allowing them to believe in something magical… I grew up believing in Santa and turned out just fine.”
But when my child point blank asks, “Is Santa real? Is he the one who really puts the presents under our tree? How would he get into our house? How could reindeer actually fly? How would it even be possible for one man to deliver presents to all of the children everywhere?” I am stuck with a decision. I can either perpetuate a mistruth or I can be honest with them. The root of the Santa tradition (which is also now completely commercialized and heavily marketed) is fiction.
It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure this out. When my son figured out the truth about all of these make believe characters (when he was 4-5-years-old), his response was: “So every parent lies to their kids? Is everyone a liar?” He seemed appalled at the perceived injustice; he went on to say, “I am going to tell all of my friends. They need to know the truth. They are not going to be happy when they find out about this.” I spent a long time trying to help him understand why people do this. I said things like, “They feel it’s more like pretending; they don’t see it as lying. Different people believe in different things, and that’s okay. We each have to make our own decisions. And you can’t tell other kids the truth because their parents will be very upset with you, because that’s their job — not yours.”
He eventually calmed down. But how silly it all must sound as we are working so hard to teach our kids about telling the truth and not lying. Lying is bad… but it’s okay for us adults to sometimes lie to our kids — even lying about good or fun things — yet leading them to believe in something that so obviously could never exist. It’s a bit confusing.
Which is another reason we chose to be real with them about these things. We talk a lot about God in our home. We talk about having faith in the unseen. We want them to know and believe in God, and we want them to trust that when we say that God is real, that we aren’t just pretending. We don’t want our kids to question us down the road or be hurt because we led them to believe in something that wasn’t real. It could ruin our credibility.
I am simply sharing why we have chosen to do things the way we have. Each of us really does have to choose our own path, regardless of how less or frequently travelled. We also need to respect one another’s chosen path. Just as we do not condemn others for choosing to embrace the tradition of Santa, we, too, should not be condemned for choosing not to perpetuate what’s untrue. But it’s funny how defensive people get. As a society, we aren’t very good at allowing one another to choose; too many get too defensive by the different choice of another. Why would others be offended when I say we didn’t want to lie?
We each have the freedom to raise our children the way we see fit. In our family, we do things differently. It may not make us the most popular or the most liked. But we do “real” in our home. Real love. Real life. Real celebration. Our hope is that we can raise kids who have real faith in a very real God. And for us, Santa just didn’t fit into our family.
Respectfully,
AR