I have discussed several reasons why I don't like (to put it mildly) Santa, but one of the biggest things to me, is just the distraction he poses. If you choose to celebrate Christmas as the time of Christs birth, then all Santa does is take away from that focus.
You can try to keep Christ in Christmas, but unless Christmas is about Christ, than it really isn't His birth we're celebrating. It would be like going to the Zoo and buying hot chocolate. You might believe that the Zoo has the best hot chocolate in the world! But it obviously wasn't the focus of your trip. It was just merely a refreshment while you were there. Christmas when focused on Santa, isn't the celebration of Christ's birth, it is all about the presents that Santa brings, the looking forward to his coming, and something about a baby.
Even for those few families that some how manage to keep Christ at the center, but still include Santa, I don't see how that adds to Christ's birth. The only thing Santa can do is take away our attention from our Lord and Savior. Time that could be spent learning about the birth of Christ, is instead spent on writing letters to a man who either doesn't exist or is dead (depending on how you see it). Time that could be spent singing praises to our God and Father, is spent singing about a jolly fat man (as my husband calls him) and his raindeer. Time that could be spent looking forward to the return of Jesus someday, is spent in anticipation of parents lying to their children about someone breaking into their house and leaving them presents.
Yes, our kids get presents on Christmas morning, but they are pretty much all out when they go to bed that night. They can look forward to opening them, but they don't lose sleep in anticipation of animals on the roof. What we think about the night of Christmas is that somewhere many, many years ago a baby came into this world as a gift to us. It might not (or was not) on this particular night, but that doesn't matter. What matters is that He came for us.
Do I think that adding the Santa distraction to our holiday would be a bad thing? With every fiber of my being. If it doesn't add to our faith in Christ, what is the point? Fun? We have tons of that. Magic? The Bible says that God abhors magic. Innocence? Where is the innocence in lying?
The only thing I can conclude is that Santa takes our focus off of Christ. I can't think of a single thing he could possibly add. Santa, in my eyes, is a huge distraction for Christians who choose to celebrate Christmas.
These are really great posts!!! Santa is the ultimate greed breeder! It's def. hard to focus on Christ when you are thinkig selfish things, "mine, mine, mine! presents, presents, presents!"
ReplyDeleteYou know, I'm not totally against Santa. As a matter of fact, I was planning on including him in our family Christmases, but when my oldest was little, he was going through a "Is this real?" stage at Christmas. I couldn't tell him Big Bird was pretend and Santa wasn't. So we didn't.
ReplyDeleteBut we did tell him about St. Nick, just as we've shared with all of our kids others who have gone before us that worshiped Christ and done good things in His name. We celebrate Jesus and giving at Christmas. And we don't put out the presents until they're sleeping. I love the surprise and the anticipation . . .for we can all appreciate the anticipation of an unseen gift. We anticipate Heaven.
We take every tool we can to teach about Jesus. For us, Santa can be a tool for that as well, even if he doesn't visit us with his reindeer. ;)