I Saw Mommybloggers Dissing Santa Claus

A recent article at The Gospel-Centered Mom (GCM) entitled, “What To Do About Santa” has proposed that if we allow jolly, old St. Nicholas to remain a part of our Christmas celebrations, he has to stay in the stocks. He is enough of a threat to all that is good and true and beautiful to warrant placing a Parental Advisory label on his forehead warning: “Santa Claus is a false god; he presents a grave threat to humanity’s understanding of the one, true, and living God; he confuses children so that they will not be able to recognize reality; and he is vying for your children’s allegiance.”

My rephrasing of her issues may sound hyperbolic, but it is not. And although my summaries of her reasons are intentionally pejorative, I actually agree with the introduction to her article. GCM opens,

First let me say I’m a huge proponent of fostering imagination in kids. My kids’ all time favorite activity is pretending. All day long I have pirates, super heroes, and exotic animals flying through my house. I love it.

I also want to point out that when I talk about Santa in this post I am specifically referring to believing in Santa, not whether or not he should be banished altogether. My husband wears a Santa hat while we bake cookies. My kids sing along to Christmas songs on the radio and they don’t skip over Santa’s name like a cuss word.

However, following this amicable opening remark, GCM demonizes the Santa legend in general, specifically attacking the character of Santa Claus in order to convince her audience that he should not be believed in. She simply makes him sound dangerous. If the threat is as large as she leads us to believe, then Santa hats and “Here comes Santa Claus” should be taken outside the city and burned. The smoke from the fire might even be toxic.

I assert that the Santa myth is not toxic. It should not be demoted to a level below “pirates, super heroes, or exotic flying animals.” He is to be enjoyed for all that he is, as or more beneficial than GCM’s allowable imaginations. In fact, the Santa legend is historical fiction. There was a person on whom the specifics of the Santa legend are built, and he was not a villain. St. Nicholas was not canonized for being the person GCM makes him out to be.

The ancient St. Nicholas certainly existed and in the modern myth He still exists, even if only in fiction. And to say “only” is not to denigrate him to one that is any less respectable than one who can be seen, touched, tasted, smelled, or heard. Santa is myth, and we ought to let him serve as such to the best of his ability.

Concerning my house, do we promote the idea that a jolly, fat, beneficent, ethically scrupulous, giant elf lives at the tip-top of the world distributing an annual dose of weal to the nice and woe to the naughty? No. Of course not. I make it a point not to lie to my children, but stories can be understood as stories, even by the youngest of children, and my children have heard the story of Santa Claus. It is not the only one they’ve heard, and it is nowhere near the best story that they’ve heard, but they have heard it. It is the story of a good man with a happy ending–a happy ending that occurs annually (according to the story).

In the order that they were presented, here are some responses to the GCM’s reasons for eschewing Santa Claus:

1.) Santa promotes works righteousness. To believe this to be the case would be to preclude any notion of one “reaping what one sows.” Do we reward our children for being good? Do we discipline them for being naughty? If we do, then according to GCM, we are promoting works righteousness.

But an even bigger question than how we parent is to ask how God parents. Does God distribute weal and woe, blessings and curses according to how we behave? Does he? This is a theological question and, therefore, must be answered in finely nuanced language, but asking these questions may help:

Can we place God in our debt and merit anything from him based on how we act? Can we force him to save us by making it onto his “Nice” list? In short, the biblical answer to this question is “No.” (Ephesians 2)

But has God said that he will reward his children when they do well and discipline them when they do ill? Yes, he has. (Hebrews 12) Is he pleased when they obey and grieved when they rebel? Yes, he is. (Ephesians 4:30)

We can’t place God in our debt, but that is not to say that he does not reward obedience.

Concerning Santa Claus, I do not catechize my children in the St. Nicholan Confession of Faith. I do not even tell them that Santa brings them presents. But at the same time, there is no need to fear the fiction. The question at hand is whether the legend of Santa Claus teaches our children something inherently unbiblical. I say, “no.”

(In the modern version of the myth, the real problem may be that if Santa Claus is a judge of niceness and naughtiness, he is not a very shrewd one. For example, have you ever met anyone who actually made the naughty list? Me either.)

2.) Santa blurs the lines between fact and fantasy. Overall, I agree with what GCM says in her second point, but she proves too much. Once our children have been told that Santa is myth, then we can move on to enjoy him as such. Do we constantly remind our children that Aslan is only a myth; that Superman can’t really fly; that Spidey can’t really stick to walls; that Bilbo doesn’t really exist, etc. Such never-ending caveats would ruin any story.

If myth “blurs the lines between fact and fantasy” to such a dangerous extent, why do we read stories to our children at all? And if we’ve decided to read them stories, then we would crush their imaginations by perpetually reminding them that this is not real. In fact, we read them stories because fiction is more real than not. Fiction is vicarious living, whether or not the protagonist has magical powers. Stories by humans will always teach us about what it means to be a human, and there are no stories that are not written by humans. Parental discretion comes into play concerning which stories are worth reading, but not because myth necessarily “blurs the lines between fact and fantasy.”

3.) Santa is a type of god. GCM asserts that Santa is so much like God that our children might end up asking us if God is like Santa. This is a real possibility for her because,

[Santa] is omnipotent (all powerful – makes toys, rides a magical sleigh, goes up and down chimneys). He is omnipresent (everywhere at once – how else could he deliver the presents?). He is omniscient (all knowing – he knows who is bad and who is good). He is eternal. He is perfect.

I am sure that I don’t know all the derivations of the Santa myth, but in general her summaries of Santa’s superpowers do not fit the bill as I understand it:

Is Santa Claus omnipotent? He has the power to make a bunch of toys (actually the elves do that), fly in a sledge powered by earthbound creatures, and fit into unreasonably small spaces. How is that anything like spoofing the biblical presentation of God Almighty? I have never heard anyone seriously call him, “Santa Almighty.”

Is Santa Claus omnipresent? He can deliver gifts to all the households on earth in one night, but nobody ever says he does them all at once. Calling him omnipresent does not accurately represent the myth. In fact, that takes Santa’s particular magic out of it.

Is Santa Claus omniscient? He knows your sleeping habits. He knows who is good or bad. Who has ever said he knows everything?

She also asserts that he is eternal. He might be immortal, but who said anything about eternal? I have not personally heard that version of the story.

4.) It is hard to compete with Santa. She closes her reasoning with “All the time and energy we put into keeping up the Santa myth could be spent focusing on Christ’s birth.”

I appreciate what she is saying, and perhaps some ought to heed her advice by radically reducing the emphasis on jolly, old St. Nick and returning to issues of central importance like the birth of Jesus Christ. This may be a “meat offered to idols” type of situation for some, but we need not necessarily fear losing our children to Santa Claus any more than to any other legendary character, fictive or historical. All fiction, yea, all of reality, must be understood in the light of the Word of God. Every aspect of the holidays must be understood in the light of God’s revelation. Santa is no different.

The problem in all of this is not Santa Claus or the retelling of the story, whether the modern one or the historical one. The problem that ought to be addressed is one of lying to your children. If we are going to address that problem, then let’s address it, but let’s do it by decrying the results of lying, not by attacking the character of Santa Claus. Santa is no villain. In reality, he’s a Saint.

The featured image for this article by Gaye Francis Willard is available for purchase here.<>google реклама аопределение позиций в поисковике

Gospel-Centered Mom, Santa Claus