While I tire of the debate, I am actually glad that it was brought up early this year. You see, I am Anti-Santa. I don’t look down on anyone who chooses to include Santa in their Christmas celebration. I do, however, feel very strongly about not having him in ours, and I am often taken aback by how far people go to defend Santa. If they start the conversation, and I attempt to share my side, I am often verbally attacked, insulted, and accused of many things that I believe are unfair. While I always try to take this with a grain of salt and move on, it is weary.
As always, the question arises within me, how far is too far to go with my Anti-Santaism?
-I’m not judging others. That is God’s job, not mine.
-I’m not telling others how to celebrate. That is a decision each family must make for themselves.
So what am I doing?
- I am stating my beliefs, and why I believe the way that I do. And I am doing so on my blog.
-I am telling my children (and whoever reads my blog) the truth about St. Nicolas, and refusing to lie about Santa.
-I am encouraging my children to obey God and will not ever encourage them to lie, not even to protect a lie that you told your children.
-I am seeking a way to co-exist with the people of this world, to be in it, but not of it. I am seeking away to love my brothers and sisters in Christ, and yet lovingly disagree with them during the Christmas season.
-I even asked the kids Christian choir teacher (a free program that I signed them up for) if she was planning on teaching secular Christmas songs. If she was, I was planning on pulling my children out for the Christmas season. I want my children to sing their praises to God, and God alone (more on this in another post).
Is that taking it too far? Is it going to far to not allow Santa into my home, not even in a snow globe? That's your call to make. It is becoming a tradition to post an Anti-Santaism series each Christmas. Many of the posts are re-written from the year before. I add things, take things out, and re-word them. I have decided to give you all prior warning this year. Each Friday between now and Christmas I will add a new post in my Anti-Santaism series.
I would love your feedback (as long as it is gently worded in accordance with Eph. 4:29). I want to learn how other Christians handle the Christmas season, and the whole Santa thing. But I do not want to argue. I will do my best to word my posts with love and respect, but I must admit that each year it is my Christian family that hurts me the most. They are the ones that attack me for my beliefs. Everyone else in my life, my birth family, my non-Christian friends and neighbors, they all accept my beliefs for what they are. It is my Christian family that is always outraged by it. So please, know that I am not attacking your beliefs, just stating my own. If your beliefs differ, I would love to hear about how, as long as you are simply sharing your beliefs in love, not attacking me.
Okay, will try to keep this very brief (haha) and might even do a topic on my own blog in response to this post, but the basic premise of this is not even Santa or Christmas, but rather it is obedience.
ReplyDeleteHeather, if you feel that God has led you down this road then you must continue to stand strong. You do not know who is watching this debate and who might look at it deeper and go before God because they have witnessed the conviction in your life. It is then left in God's hands to convict or not.
Personally, I was once of the santa crowd, I will admit that. But the Holy Spirit has convicted me personally of this--first of all for the lie itself. And we've talked to our older children about this and apologized to them for that. But also because of the things I've discovered about the holidays (this and others) that we feel led to purge from our lives. I won't cover them here because there are too many and quite honestly, some are not ready to hear them.
I encourage everyone to seek out the Lord's direction in this and all matters! Lay open your heart before Him and ask Him how to proceed, ask Him to show you what truth you should pursue.
At the end of the day, that is all that matters. Did we do what God wanted us to do? Is is Biblical? Where we obedient? When we stand before Him will we need to justify or will we be able to say that no matter how tiring or wearying it was, we stood in His will?
((HUGS))
What a great reminder, Tam. A lot of my posts from last year I felt came across too harsh/judgemental, that was the main reason that I rewrote them. My purpose here isn't to play the Holy Spirit, but just to share my beliefs and views. The whole reason I posted this introduction post was so that people who didn't want to read them, wouldn't get sucked in without knowing what my viewpoint was. My next post describes how I started to be against Santa, then the following posts go into how it grew. The final post in the series re-iterates that it is God's place to convict people, and no one should mimic anyone else's walk with Him. We are each on the path that He want's us on, but I still feel very led to share what He has laid on my heart.
ReplyDeleteI am very excited to read this series! We do the santa thing at our house, although very minimally. He brings 1 gift and stockings. We focus very much on the reason for the season :) And spend our Advent preparing our hearts for Jesus. But I always like to hear how others celebrate. I pray that people are kind when speaking to you (and others who are anti-santa. God bless!
ReplyDelete