To Tell or Not To Tell

ATTENTION: If you are a child under the age of 10 you need to be sure to STOP reading this post right now and to ask for your parent's permission to continue reading.

Now, let us move on. If you are a parent, you know the blessings that come with having small children. Their unending amount of energy and lack of concern and worry about everyday pressures is enviable. Children also possess something that many of us as adults have forgotten about our childhood - an imagination! At any time and at any place children can come up with some of the most unique games and imaginary circumstances. If you are parent, you will inevitably spend time teaching your children the importance of distinguishing between the reality of life and the imaginary things of this world. Such is the case with one of the most controversial subjects for Christian parents - the issue of Santa Clause.

There is no widespread consensus among evangelical parents as to whether or not it is right to tell our children about Santa Clause.  To be quite frank with our readers here, I really do not find Santa Clause to be the biggest threat to us as Christians to having a Christ-centered Christmas. I think that the materialism, gluttony, impulsive spending, and a lack of focus on the Incarnation and virgin birth should be enough to keep all of us spiritually concerned in the month of December. 

C. Michael Patton has written an excellent piece on practicing discernment with this issue and as to what the  real problems are for Christians during the month of December:

"Should Christians play Santa? I have no problem with it. Personally, I can’t bring myself to tell my children that he actually exists, but I have no problem with others who do and I have no problem singing Christmas carols that don’t involve Christ so long as Christ is the focus of our lives, not just our Decembers. If Christ is not the focus of our lives January-November, December is not going to make any difference anyway because, contrary to popular belief, December does not sanctify the rest of the year."

You can read the post in its entirety HERE.

NOTE: Personally, Christina and I do NOT tell our children that there is a Santa Clause. No, we do not believe that there is a biblical mandate for this and we would both say that this is an issue of preference and individual soul liberty rather than conviction. And NO, we will not debate or split hairs over a potential disagreement about this. Calvinism...yes...Santa....NO!!! We feel that it is difficult enough to keep young children God-centered during this time of year and with the inclusion of Santa Clause it just makes it that much more difficult. However, we do respect other Christian parents who decide to tell their children that there is a Santa Clause. I do not have a problem with that and I respect your decision.

With that being said...how many of our readers who have children would like to chime in on this? What do you do about the Santa Clause issue? How do go about explaining this or do you do what we do with the Santa Clause thing?


A Post by Pastor Mike in 2007