Ben and I have chosen not to do the Santa Claus thing for various reasons.
1. There is a pretty good reason to celebrate Christmas without having to bring Santa Claus into it.
2. Instead of focusing on the good gifts we receive from Santa, we can focus on the gift we were given in the birth of a Savior on that Christmas morning and the salvation we received on the cross come Good Friday.
3. Not buying into the Santa Claus things helps make Christmas in our house less commercially driven.
4. We figure it is healthy for our kids to have something they do, that not everyone else does.
Even though we tell our kids that Santa Claus is not real and that the presents they receive on Christmas morning come from us, we do participate in Saint Nicholas Day, which is tomorrow, December 6th. We do not tell our kids that Saint Nicholas is going to come and bring them gifts, but instead talk about the real person behind the Santa Claus myth and what we know about him.
We tell our kids that Nicholas was a pastor who lived a few hundred years after Jesus. We tell them that Nicholas loved the people in his village, taught them about Jesus, and cared for them. We also read to them the most popular story that circulates about Nicholas - the story of the the poor man and his three penniless daughters who had no dowry. We tell them that Nicholas took three bags of gold to the poor man's house in the middle of the night and left them by his daughter's shoes. We tell them that this gift made it possible for the three girls to get married.
Then we talk about the wonderful gifts we receive from God that we do not deserve, how blessed we are, and how much we are loved by our family and Lord. Then we put the kids to bed and tell them that if they leave their shoes outside their door that we will put a surprise in them to remind them of how much they are loved. Ben and I put a piece of fruit and some candy in their shoes and in the morning they are so excited to see their goodies.
It is one of our family traditions.
I also like that St. Nick is purported to have punched Arius in the throat. Or maybe slapped him. Whatever. Nicholas was a hardcore pastor, and that's way cooler than some guy who hangs out with elves.
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