First, let me give credit where credit is due. Nancy Leigh DeMoss wrote a book entitled Lies Women Believe that is incredible and terribly convicting that I highly recommend to all Christian women. Ms. DeMoss is sound, not touchy feely, and that's the kind of stuff I need to be reading (after the Bible) to mold me more and more into the image of Christ.
The title for my post today came to mind after reading a message on Facebook from someone asking me to write on today's topic, Santa Claus. My friend said she had seen on Facebook where a woman wrote a letter to her daughter to break the news that Santa wasn't real. Say all you want about St. Nick being a good man (which he was) and that it is a fun game we play with our kids, but the truth of the matter is that telling our kids that Santa Claus knows whether kids or good or bad, and that he rewards those who are good with Christmas presents is a LIE. Let's not gloss over the truth.
Santa isn't the only lie parents tell their kids now. Another I've heard involves kids giving their pacifiers away for the babies that need them. Who has ever said "I don't know" what happened to a particular toy that "went missing", when it actually got thrown in the trash or given away? These are lies, and they keep our kids from growing up.
One may argue: "Grow up? Let's let our kids be kids. It only lasts a short while."
True. The older my oldest gets, the more in awe I am that childhood is fleeting, but that doesn't mean I need to keep it from taking its natural course. When parents intervene with the children's maturity, we end up with middle school kids that still don't help with chores around the house, teenage boys that expect parents to hand out date money as if it grows on trees, and adult kids that fail to launch out of the nest at the appropriate time.
And when it comes to spiritual matters, I hope to see my children grow from desiring milk alone to also feasting on meat. That's hard to accomplish if I don't even give them the right milk to begin with. Some of our basics of the Christian life are found in the Ten Commandments. First, "Do not have other gods besides Me" (Exodus 20:3), then, "Do not make an idol for yourself, whether in the shape of anything in the heavens above or on the earth below or in the waters under the earth" (Exodus 20:4).
When we sing these words
He sees you when you're sleeping
He knows when you're awake
He knows if you've been bad or good,
so be good for goodness sake.
we are giving Santa Claus the attributes of God. We make Santa a god.
Childlike faith and the magical wonder of the glitz and glamour we've made into Christmas causes a child to look at the jolly, bearded man in red as an idol. All of this leads me to believe that if I play the game of Santa Claus with my kids I'm leading them into sin, and as for myself, I'm breaking commandment #9, "Do not give false testimony against your neighbor" (Exodus 20:16).
This is just one of the major reasons we don't fall into our cultural norm of playing Santa Claus. The other is that Christmas is about the birth of the long-awaited Messiah, Jesus. I want no other distractions but to celebrate God's amazing gift to the world and point my children to Him as He is the only Truth that will set them free.
Tomorrow, I'll get into the logistics of how our family celebrates a Santa Claus free Christmas. Join me then!
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