To humans belong the plans of the heart, but from the LORD comes the proper answer of the tongue.
Proverbs 16:1
My husband and I tend to be a little weird about
Christmas. Over the past several years,
we have worked to bring more sacred and less commercial into our Christmas
celebrations. We don’t do a lot of
retail Christmas shopping. We don’t put
our tree up until Advent officially begins.
We don’t put Baby Jesus in the Creche until Christmas Eve, and the
Wisemen start out in another room and don’t reach the manger until Epiphany. We also do not do Santa with our boys. I KNOW….we sound like a couple of zealots. But, it’s how we enjoy the season. We’re not anti-Christmas, just
anti-commercial.
That said, we had to have the “Christmas is not
your birthday” talk with our boys last weekend as TV watching was becoming
increasingly obnoxious with all of the “I wants” the toy commercials brought
about. We had a good discussion about
the meaning of Christmas and decided that anytime anyone in our house had a
case of the “I wants”, we would gently remind one another that, “Christmas is
not your birthday.” Note the phrase, in our house. Apparently, we should have stressed that a
bit more as later that same evening when asked at the local Christmas parade by
a classmate’s mother if he would be going to see Santa later our oldest
replied, “No. Christmas is not my birthday.”
Needless to say, she was a little taken aback.
Afterward, over dinner, the boys wanted to know,
“Is Santa real?” Mmmm…. Where to
begin? I fell back on the old tried and
true St. Nicholas story. It was great,
until our oldest who never misses anything asks, “Did St. Nicholas die?” “Yes, honey, St. Nicholas died a long time
ago, but people like to remember him by playing Santa Clause.”
Our youngest, who is four, was listening avidly to
this entire exchange. His brown eyes as
big as saucers he burst out, “Santa’s DEAD?!” In my head, I could already hear the angry
calls from preschool parents all over town.
I beseechingly looked across at my husband. HELP!!
My ever-so-rational husband responded, “No. Santa was invented by a marketing company in
the late 1800’s to sell toys. What?” he
asked, catching my look of annoyance.
“It’s true.”
In the meantime, our four year old came to his own
conclusion. “Santa’s in heaven with
Jesus, Mommy. That’s good—hmm, mmh.” He makes a little “hmm-mmh” noise when he
says something he’s really happy about.
In the end, we decided that Santa wasn’t real, St.
Nicholas was in heaven with Jesus, people who love them will get them presents,
and that they could absolutely, under no circumstances repeat any of that to
anyone at school or church under penalty of losing all of their Star Wars toys.
And that was only November 24th. It could be an interesting month.
Blessings and Peace,
Sara
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