“Santa Claus is not the only one who knows who has been naughty or nice.” I saw the sign. I was stunned. I made a left turn at the next possible place to turn and rode back by the sign sitting in front of the church just to make sure it said what I thought it said. Now let me issue a caveat here: I know the pastor who put the words on that sign and he is one of the most conservative people I know and a very gifted pastor/preacher. I know that for him it was an attention grabber to point people to the absolute omniscience of God. I know that at some level given his quite jovial nature that he was just having fun. He was being playful. But I read those words in the context of what I see in our culture in terms of what we have done with Santa Claus and within five years will have done with the Easter Bunny. We take them both seriously! Smart people taking seriously what is clealy a made up myth. But the problem is even greater than this travesty.

If I think that Santa Claus really exists and knows who has been naughty or nice then I have either elevated him to the status of God or I have lowered God to the status of Santa Claus. And then I have made it seem as if good things come to us based on the good deeds that we do. I have emptied God of grace and made of God one who is watching and weighing what I do to determine if I get the eternal toys. So, what do we as believers do with Santa Claus? What should make us distinctive from the world?

I believe that we as believers are faced with three options only two of which have any real viability for us. The first one is not a viable option for us. It is simply to join the world at the hip and to act as if he is a real being doing real things: reindeer flying through the air on one night of the year delivering toys and other goodies by landing on rooftops and descending a chimney. Tell that story to the starving kids in refugee camps all over the world. Yet, it is this kind of craziness that casues professing Christians to act like pagans at Christmas. Can I preach just a second: I am all but fed up with the fight over whether it is “happy holidays” or “merry Christmas” because some I hear saying “merry Christmas” as if it is some BIG DEAL are spending out the wazoo for Christmas gifts given to people who already have more than enough. Let me tell you what would be a BIG DEAL: take all that you are going to spend on gifts and gift and equal or greater amount to the missions offering of your church. Then you will have it close to what it really is all about. This option of acting as if it is all real is silliness if not sacrelilgious.

The most extreme option that I did not take but I surely admire is to make sure that your children know the truth about this made up man in the red suit and that they do receive some gifts at Christmas but it is from real, flesh and blood people. Anne and I did not do that. Do I wish now that we had? Well, yes. But we were classic liberals during that time and lived for the most part to be quite honest like the world was living. It was no big deal to us. Some of our younger parents in our church have chosen this option. I admire them so much. I can at least assure them of this truth: your kids won’t grow up and have any right to think, “well if Santa Claus isn’t real, maybe God isn’t either.” There is one other option. It is the one that we chose.

Join in with all the fun of the Santa stuff. But make sure that it is kept at the level of story and not history. Do not even begin to act as if this man is really a real man living at the north pole making toys and feeding reindeer. Tell the truth at the level of story. Compare his story to Dorothy on the way to the land of Oz. Read, “Twas the Night Before Christmas” but make sure that what is emphasized is that it is simply a story. Stories fascinate children and fire their imaginations. They can live in the world of a story and exit it when it is time without damage, but when we treat all of this stuff as if is real, our children exit this with some puzzlement about what else we may have “fibbed” to them about. So, I simply want to warn you because whatever you are doing at Chrsitmas with Santa is what you will do at Easter with the bunny. And that phenomenon is so recent that my recommendation to believers is that we get together and bounce the bunny into a far away land. Let’s say very clearly, “there is no such thing but there is a babe born in a manger, a Savior crucified on a cross, and a Lord and Christ raised from the dead.

Trackback This Post | Subscribe to the comments through RSS Feed