My Misguided War with Santa

When my children were young, I was at war with Santa. I thought the whole Santa tradition was at best a distraction and at worst, idolatry.

Santa would play no role in my children’s lives.

My own mother, godly woman that she was, didn’t think that way. I can remember some of the gifts under the tree signed “from Santa,” clearly in Mom’s handwriting. I guess she was playing along with the game but not trying to hide the fact that “Santa” hadn’t really been involved in those gifts showing up on Christmas morning.

But as a young dad, back when I saw everything in stark black and white, all I could see in Santa was a danger to the spiritual health of my children. I was determined not to let the jolly old elf undermine all that I wanted to teach them about Christmas.

But I had a problem: Santa is ubiquitous for three weeks every year. During the holiday season, you can’t watch TV or go shopping or look at advertisements without running into Santa. There was no way I could isolate my children from the Santa tradition.

What to do?

I decided to look into the story behind the Santa tradition, and there I found something wonderful: in the Santa tradition, we have the story of a great Christian hero.

Our “Santa” comes from the ancient story of St. Nicolas (you can see how “Santa Claus” was derived from his name). Many of the stories about him are intertwined with legend, so it’s hard to be sure what is history and what is embellishment. But it appears that his wealthy parents died when he was young, so he suddenly found himself a wealthy young man.

Nicolas heard about a poor man who couldn’t afford to provide dowries for his three young daughters; in that time, this meant that they wouldn’t be eligible for marriage and would likely end up on the street as prostitutes. When the oldest reached a marriageable age, Nicolas – wanting to provide for the family’s needs but also avoid publicity – ran by the poor man’s house in the middle of the night and tossed a bag full of coins through the window. The money in the bag was enough to serve as a dowry and save the oldest daughter from a bleak future.

When Nicolas did the same thing when the second daughter came of age, the father resolved to stay up all night to catch his benefactor the next time around. Sure enough, when the youngest daughter reached maturity Nicolas repeated his gesture, and the father caught him. (You can see how this story evolved into our own grand fable of Santa visiting homes in the middle of the night to leave gifts.)

The St. Nicolas story includes more – about his becoming a bishop in his home town, about his attending the Council of Nicea (where the doctrine of the Trinity finally took shape), about his suffering cruel torture during one of the outbreaks of persecution in the Roman empire.

Now that I had the goods on St. Nicolas, I knew what I could do with our culture’s obsession with Santa. I could point to that familiar image and tell my children about a great Christian hero, a godly man noted for his generosity, his courage, and his leadership. I didn’t need to protect my children from Santa anymore, I could use his occasional appearance in their lives as a teaching moment.

Unlike some issues – like homosexuality and gender issues – Scripture doesn’t provide chapter-and-verse guidance on cultural traditions like Santa or the trick-or-treat tradition. This is just one more place where Christian parents must navigate the complexities of parenting in modern culture. My way of dealing with the Santa tradition isn’t the only way. Other Christian parents must follow their own conscience and respond to their own family and cultural situations as they see fit.

Parenting is, of course, more art than science.

After all, babies don’t come with instruction manuals, and there are no simple formulas that will guarantee that we’ll get the parenting thing right. This is why Christian parents need all the help they can get – primarily from God’s Word and His Spirit but also from their extended families, from other Christian families, and, in this case, from Christian history.

And this is why we pray so faithfully for our children. We know we need God’s help not only to keep us from errors but also (and this is a great comfort) to sovereignly override our errors as He wisely shapes our children’s lives.

Christian parents, persevere.

Persevere, 
Paul Pyle  Discipleship Pastor