Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall trouble or hardship or persecution or famine or nakedness or danger or sword? . . . No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through Him who loved us. For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.
~Romans 8:35, 38-39


Monday, December 17, 2007

'Down with Santa' by Thabiti Anyabwile

'Down with Santa' by Thabiti Anyabwile

I am so glad to see a Christian seriously looking at this issue from a BIBLICAL worldview. A friend and I were talking about this just the other day ~ that just because our culture does Santa does not mean we as Christians should do Santa. Since when were we Christians supposed to conform to the culture? Thabiti does an excellent job of explaining why Santa should not be included in the Christian Christmas. He portrays my sentiments exactly.

My parents did not want to lie to my brother and me, so we did not "do" Santa. My Christmases were just fine. I have wonderful memories of "magical" Christmases. On thing I did run into as a child and am now revisiting as a parent is that I was forbidden to tell other children the truth about Santa. I fully understand why my parents did this. But now that I have a four year old who is very adament about not lying and telling the truth and wondering why people believe lies, I don't think I want to tell him to go along with the lie for the other children's sake. How can I tell my child NOT to tell the truth? That goes against what I have taught him and what the Bible teaches. There is of course the fact that we should tell the truth in love. But how do I teach my four year old this as it applies to Santa and other children? As I said, I'm still grappling with this issue. Any comments and suggestions would be welcome.

1 comment:

ejm said...

Silence is golden on this issue...my parents never told us to lie but they always told us NOT to inform other people's children of the truths of Santa. I don't think we'll win any friends by outting well-meaning parents! :)