How to Forego Santa (Without Ruining Your Kids’ Lives)

As a child, I never believed in Santa. My husband’s parents, on the other hand, went all out to preserve Santa, even writing letters to their kids from the North Pole and not putting gifts under the tree until Christmas morning. Strangely, the Are we going to raise our kids to believe in Santa? discussion never happened while my husband and I were dating. We both kind of assumed we’d just do things the way our parents had, which would’ve been fine had our upbringings been even remotely similar.

Our oldest son was born in January, so by the time his first Christmas rolled around, he was well on his way to understanding what was going on around him. As the first grandchild for both of our parents, the craziness started right around the first of September. Finally, one night, I sat down at the dinner table across from my husband and laid it out:

“I don’t want to do Santa,” I said.

From the look he gave me, you’d have thought I was speaking another language. To him, Santa was a fun and harmless Christmas tradition which had given him fond memories. Why on earth wouldn’t we do Santa? For me, it boiled down to trust. I didn’t want our kids to ever question if we were telling them the truth. Santa seemed to me to compromise that simply by being someone they couldn’t see but who knew their hearts and actions and gave them good and perfect gifts. We had a good conversation about the pros and cons. But it kept coming back to one point for me:

[Tweet “If I lied about Santa, why wouldn’t my kids wonder if I also lied about God?”]

I’ll be honest; my husband never one hundred percent agreed that this was a potential problem. It hadn’t been a problem for him. And there are thousands of kids out there for whom it’s never been a problem. I get that. But I really didn’t want to take the chance that our kids would stumble over it.

Eventually, we agreed not to raise our kids believing in Santa, which did not go over all that well with my in-laws. But because we’d come to our decision together and had reasons to back it up, because we were intentional about it, they agreed to defer to our judgment. I think it also helped that we had this discussion before we got too far into our first Christmas season with kids. Had we waited and just gone with the flow, turning it around would likely have been much harder.

Once we knew we were skipping Santa, it was pretty easy to put aside ideas like the Elf on the Shelf (which made me happy because I have entirely too much to do to spend time every day in December moving a doll and coming up with bigger and better adventures for it). But there was still that niggling feeling. After all, it wasn’t as if we could completely isolate our kids from Santa.

Nor did we want to. Santa is fun, and he’s rooted in the lovely story of Saint Nicholas, who is a great example of giving to the poor and protecting the weak, traits we want our kids to embrace and emulate as they grow to be more Christ-like. Stories of St. Nick and Santa Claus are wonderful ways to point our kids to Christ, to show them what it means to give generously. Besides, there’s something adorable about a photo of a little kid on Santa’s lap.

The solution, for us, is straightforward. We simply remind our kids that Santa isn’t real. That he’s a fun game some people play. And that they should never, ever ruin the game for someone else. Doing this allows us to incorporate fun traditions, like reading ‘Twas the Night Before Christmas and getting that photo on Santa’s lap. At the same time, it lets us avoid the materialistic letter to Santa and the inevitable disappointment when not everything they asked for is under the tree. And we avoid the sticky wicket of explaining down the road that Jesus is real but Santa is not.

So far, it works for us. I love to hear my kids talking about Christmas as Jesus’ birthday and explaining that we give gifts to one another because God gave us His Son Jesus as the best gift ever. And although our friends inevitably roll their eyes, it doesn’t seem quite so awful when, after someone mentions Santa, our kids lean over and whisper, “He isn’t real. But Jesus is.”

Of course, my husband is one of many positive examples of kids who grew up firmly believing in Santa and didn’t experience a spiritual crisis when that belief was shattered. At the same time, I look back at the amazing Christmases of my childhood and have no regrets that I didn’t spend time plotting how to sneak downstairs and catch Santa in the act or to catch a glimpse of his reindeer.

In the end, your approach to Santa (as well as the Elf on the Shelf, Advent calendars, and other Christmas traditions) needs only to work for your family. Whatever you choose, if you intentionally keep your eyes on the coming of the Christ child and encourage your kids to embrace the wonder of God-made-flesh in tiny, lowly, human form, then the issue of Santa or no Santa won’t matter so much.

Because Santa isn’t real. Jesus is.

Elizabeth Maddrey is an author of several contemporary Christian romance novels. She is also a wife, mother of two amazing boys, Awana Commander, and beloved daughter of the King. Though her PhD in Computer Science does little to help her succeed in any of those tasks, she owns her nerddom just the same. She blogs at elizabethmaddrey.com.

 

Photograph by Hans Braxmeier.