What Should I Tell My Kids About Santa?
00:00:00.000 | (upbeat music)
00:00:02.580 | ♪ Better watch out ♪
00:00:07.640 | ♪ Better not cry ♪
00:00:09.120 | ♪ Better not pout ♪
00:00:10.460 | ♪ I'm telling you why ♪
00:00:12.640 | - Santa Claus is coming to town,
00:00:14.600 | likely to a shopping mall near you.
00:00:17.440 | And Santa appears a lot this time of year
00:00:20.200 | and in a lot of our listener emails too.
00:00:22.480 | In fact, 200 mentions of Santa are in the inbox to date.
00:00:27.920 | But it's been a few years since we've last addressed him
00:00:30.160 | here on the Ask Pastor John podcast.
00:00:32.120 | And to do so today, Pastor John joins me over the phone.
00:00:35.920 | Pastor John, of course,
00:00:37.080 | there's a fourth century Greek historical figure
00:00:39.040 | named Saint Nicholas.
00:00:41.040 | That's not who we're talking about.
00:00:42.240 | All of those 200 references to Santa
00:00:44.160 | are speaking about the mythical, white bearded,
00:00:47.360 | red suited, reindeer flying Santa, that one.
00:00:51.160 | And most recently from a podcast listener named Jill.
00:00:54.440 | Dear Pastor John, I'm a stay at home mother
00:00:55.880 | of three small children, five, four, and two.
00:00:59.360 | My husband and I grew up as children
00:01:01.060 | believing Santa Claus to be real.
00:01:03.240 | And while it was truly magical for those nine years
00:01:06.160 | when I found out that it wasn't true,
00:01:08.240 | I remember burying my head and sobbing.
00:01:11.240 | I was not angry at my parents.
00:01:12.800 | I knew they wanted to surprise me
00:01:14.880 | and make Christmas special.
00:01:16.600 | However, I was truly disappointed.
00:01:19.700 | Now, as a mother, I feel torn between scriptures
00:01:23.640 | like do not lie to one another, Colossians 3, 9,
00:01:28.040 | and yet still desiring to create something mythical
00:01:30.420 | and special and magical for my children around Christmas.
00:01:33.640 | But I fear more emphasis is placed
00:01:36.400 | on the bearded man in a suit than Jesus, our savior.
00:01:40.320 | My question is, what if my husband feels differently
00:01:44.000 | and actually wants to keep the Santa myth alive
00:01:46.320 | for our children?
00:01:48.040 | What, Pastor John, should I do?
00:01:51.040 | - Well, I see three different issues
00:01:54.440 | in what Jill is asking, at least if I hear her correctly.
00:01:59.440 | And so let me say a word about each one of these.
00:02:02.400 | And I'm gonna end on the very question
00:02:04.600 | about dealing with her husband.
00:02:06.460 | But I think there are two other issues besides that one
00:02:10.920 | that probably need to be addressed.
00:02:12.960 | Number one is that the primary crisis in her own mind
00:02:18.360 | seems to be, can you preserve the myth and magic
00:02:23.360 | of Santa Claus without disobeying the biblical command
00:02:27.800 | in Colossians 3, 9 not to lie to one another?
00:02:30.960 | And I think the answer to that is really quite simple
00:02:33.760 | and straightforward, no, you can't.
00:02:36.380 | That is, you can't teach your children
00:02:39.580 | that Santa Claus is real if your intention
00:02:43.320 | is to teach them the truth.
00:02:45.660 | And by real, I mean real the way children think of real,
00:02:49.540 | not the way sophisticated intellectuals
00:02:51.700 | would call a myth real or that imagination is real.
00:02:56.100 | I get that.
00:02:57.220 | It's just not the point.
00:02:58.260 | The point is, are we misleading the children
00:03:02.460 | in saying to them, is a simple statement of fact,
00:03:07.060 | Santa Claus lives at the North Pole a fact?
00:03:10.700 | Santa Claus flies with reindeer, leaves gifts under the tree,
00:03:14.540 | is served by elves.
00:03:16.180 | To present this myth as fact is not truthful
00:03:21.180 | to our children.
00:03:23.300 | Now, I'm trying to get inside other people's heads
00:03:25.660 | when they listen to this and ask questions.
00:03:28.640 | And so I'm responding here to imaginary questions
00:03:31.660 | that I would ask myself.
00:03:32.820 | This is different, for example,
00:03:34.540 | from reading fiction to your children.
00:03:37.380 | Somebody might say, well, it's not wrong
00:03:39.100 | to have fiction in your kids' lives,
00:03:41.660 | like "Chronicles of Narnia" or "Grimm's Fairy Tales."
00:03:45.460 | Those are presented not as real the way breakfast is real
00:03:50.460 | and backyards are real.
00:03:53.780 | They're made up, just like Jesus made up parables.
00:03:57.960 | And the children should know that they're made up
00:04:00.620 | and they should know,
00:04:01.580 | why do parents tell children made up stories?
00:04:04.900 | 'Cause it's a good thing, I think,
00:04:06.220 | to tell children made up stories.
00:04:08.300 | There's a reason why Jesus told parables
00:04:10.700 | and that you have these kinds of things in the Bible.
00:04:13.860 | Here's another response to a possible objection.
00:04:16.860 | Not being truthful about Santa Claus
00:04:20.020 | or untruthful about Santa Claus
00:04:21.940 | is different from keeping from small children
00:04:26.940 | many difficult issues in married life.
00:04:30.020 | I can imagine somebody saying,
00:04:31.620 | well, we don't tell our children all the truth
00:04:34.740 | about what's going on.
00:04:36.220 | It's not lying when we don't burden our younger children
00:04:40.300 | with financial hardships or marital squabbles
00:04:43.540 | or difficulties with the in-laws.
00:04:45.860 | The older they get, the more they should know.
00:04:48.740 | But when they're very young,
00:04:50.840 | not capable of dealing with any of those things,
00:04:54.820 | we just withhold them.
00:04:56.840 | But foisting on our children
00:04:59.820 | an entire fabricated framework
00:05:03.980 | for understanding Christmas that is not true
00:05:07.780 | and which they take to be true is totally different
00:05:11.820 | from helping our children handle as much truth as they can
00:05:15.820 | in an age-appropriate way.
00:05:17.940 | Santa Claus is not a withholding of painful truth
00:05:22.940 | until the children are old enough to handle it.
00:05:25.740 | Santa Claus is the obscuring of thrilling truth
00:05:30.740 | because we think the real truth
00:05:33.820 | can't compete with Santa Claus
00:05:36.020 | in the hearts of our children,
00:05:38.220 | which leads now to the second issue,
00:05:40.740 | namely that the first issue is not the real issue.
00:05:44.180 | Can you say this without lying?
00:05:45.740 | The first issue was, can Santa Claus myth and magic
00:05:50.740 | be presented and preserved for our children
00:05:54.020 | as something real without lying?
00:05:56.340 | That's not the issue.
00:05:57.500 | That's just not the issue.
00:05:58.660 | The main issue is, why would a Christian
00:06:03.100 | who has found in Jesus Christ
00:06:05.180 | the greatest treasure in the world
00:06:07.500 | and who sees in the incarnation and life and death
00:06:12.260 | and resurrection and reign of Jesus
00:06:15.540 | the most amazing story in the world
00:06:19.060 | and who knows that in this real historical event,
00:06:24.020 | all the truth of myth and magic became reality,
00:06:28.660 | why would such a Christian ever dream
00:06:32.620 | of replacing or obscuring or supplementing
00:06:36.380 | this coming true of every story worth telling
00:06:41.140 | with such a non-gospel, pathetic myth like Santa Claus
00:06:45.620 | whose message is, you better be good.
00:06:47.900 | You better not cry.
00:06:49.540 | I just can't imagine it.
00:06:51.900 | But I regard the effort of Christian parents
00:06:55.380 | to lay the Santa Claus story over the Jesus story
00:07:00.380 | as a failure to be thrilled
00:07:03.100 | with the greatest story in the world
00:07:04.900 | and a failure of imagination
00:07:07.460 | for how to speak about the real story
00:07:09.820 | and show the real story in a way
00:07:12.180 | that helps children share our amazement.
00:07:14.740 | It's a failure.
00:07:15.860 | It's a syncretistic compromise with culture.
00:07:19.980 | Poor Jesus, poor Jesus.
00:07:22.460 | He's invisible.
00:07:24.260 | Santa Claus is not.
00:07:25.660 | You can see him at the mall.
00:07:27.980 | Poor Jesus doesn't make any rounds on a sled in the sky
00:07:32.620 | leaving toys under the tree.
00:07:34.820 | So instead of searching the scriptures for,
00:07:38.700 | why is it a great thing for Jesus to be invisible
00:07:43.300 | and not to be here as it says in John 16, 7,
00:07:46.340 | that it is a great thing that he's not here.
00:07:48.780 | Why is it a great thing that he left the earth
00:07:54.100 | and sent his spirit instead of staying here
00:07:57.140 | or riding on a sled?
00:07:58.580 | Why is his slowness to come back again
00:08:03.580 | at the end of the age in the great second coming
00:08:06.460 | a huge mercy that the children ought to understand?
00:08:10.500 | Second Peter 3, 9.
00:08:12.780 | In other words, I'm dealing with the invisibility
00:08:15.180 | of Jesus here.
00:08:16.860 | And why is it not amazing to parents
00:08:21.580 | that we are representatives on earth?
00:08:24.900 | That's a glorious view of human life.
00:08:27.140 | Second Corinthians 5, 20.
00:08:29.860 | Instead of finding these stupendous answers
00:08:33.200 | to these questions that children may have,
00:08:35.920 | finding answers in the Bible,
00:08:38.100 | we replace the most important questions in the world
00:08:42.180 | with an easy distraction.
00:08:43.700 | That's the real issue.
00:08:44.540 | Why would we do that?
00:08:45.540 | Why would we do that?
00:08:48.320 | Now, the last issue.
00:08:50.280 | Jill wants to know what if she does want to focus
00:08:54.960 | on the glories of the truth of Christ,
00:08:58.280 | but her husband is still stuck
00:09:01.280 | in the superiority of the Santa substitute.
00:09:05.200 | Here's my three suggestions to her.
00:09:08.200 | Number one, talk this through with him in August,
00:09:12.280 | not December.
00:09:13.540 | Now I say that, I know it's too late.
00:09:16.800 | This is a principle of conflict
00:09:20.600 | that Noel and I have found very helpful over the years.
00:09:23.960 | Separate principled issue discussions
00:09:28.560 | from pressured emotional crises
00:09:31.920 | in the moment of application.
00:09:33.960 | That's number one.
00:09:35.000 | Number two, spell out the gains, not the losses.
00:09:39.920 | Dropping Santa is gain,
00:09:43.400 | or Christianity is a lie.
00:09:47.380 | If Christ cannot compete with Santa
00:09:50.220 | in the hearts of our kids,
00:09:51.900 | we don't know the real Christ,
00:09:53.500 | or there is no real Christ.
00:09:55.740 | Number three, give your husband concrete ideas
00:10:00.140 | for ways of celebrating Christ's coming
00:10:03.100 | that are just as exciting as the charade of Santa Claus.
00:10:07.940 | And if you need help, my wife wrote a book
00:10:10.380 | called "Treasuring God in Our Traditions"
00:10:14.020 | that describes some of the things we did
00:10:16.020 | over the years for our little kids
00:10:18.420 | when we didn't have Santa Claus,
00:10:21.900 | we didn't have stockings, we didn't even have a tree.
00:10:24.700 | (both laughing)
00:10:26.780 | But you say, "How can you not have a tree?"
00:10:28.380 | Well, there are alternative exciting things to do.
00:10:31.660 | Bottom line, truth is stranger than fiction.
00:10:35.580 | Stranger, more amazing, more thrilling, more durable,
00:10:39.460 | more heart transforming, more Christ honoring,
00:10:43.140 | more soul satisfying.
00:10:45.140 | And your children, get this now,
00:10:47.740 | your children have Christ-shaped empty spaces
00:10:52.740 | in their hearts.
00:10:54.660 | They don't know this.
00:10:57.700 | You must show them.
00:11:00.660 | But it can't be done.
00:11:02.220 | That can't be done with Santa Claus, only Christ.
00:11:06.660 | - Amen.
00:11:07.740 | In fact, all of us have this Christ-shaped empty space
00:11:10.540 | in our hearts, and the promises of Santa
00:11:12.220 | will never fill that space ever.
00:11:14.560 | Thank you, Pastor John.
00:11:15.620 | And Jill, thanks for sending in the question.
00:11:17.900 | You represent many, many listeners out there
00:11:20.580 | who are asking similar questions,
00:11:22.580 | so thanks for sending it in
00:11:23.660 | and being the representative to ask it.
00:11:26.500 | And speaking of Christmas, next time on the podcast,
00:11:29.940 | we're gonna address how to find purpose and meaning
00:11:33.500 | in our Christmas gift giving to others.
00:11:36.880 | Now, of course, all this talk about Christmas
00:11:38.740 | means another year is about to end.
00:11:41.820 | 2019 will soon be here.
00:11:44.600 | It's incredible how fast these years go by.
00:11:47.200 | And as 2018 draws to a close,
00:11:49.280 | we enter a really critical season in our budget cycle
00:11:52.080 | here at Desiring God.
00:11:54.320 | Get this, nearly 40% of our annual budget
00:11:57.960 | comes to us from donors in the month of December alone.
00:12:02.720 | 40%.
00:12:03.840 | So this last month of the year is really huge
00:12:06.400 | for our year-round labors here at DG.
00:12:09.560 | And if you are a regular listener to the podcast,
00:12:12.840 | and if you benefit from the resources at Desiring God,
00:12:15.500 | would you consider making a donation before December 31st?
00:12:19.820 | In fact, you can do so right now online.
00:12:22.180 | Go to desiringgod.org/give.
00:12:26.540 | That's desiringgod.org/give.
00:12:31.340 | Thank you for considering it during this really critical
00:12:34.940 | last month of the year for us.
00:12:38.180 | I am a very grateful Tony Reinke,
00:12:40.980 | and we will see you back here on Friday.
00:12:43.660 | (upbeat music)
00:12:46.240 | (upbeat music)
00:12:48.820 | [BLANK_AUDIO]