Is [Insert Blank] Made Up?
This past week my five year old son and I were sitting down to watch A Charlie Brown Christmas when he suddenly said, “Daddy, is Santa made up?”
You can imagine that I was taken aback. I expected this day to come, but not now. After all, it took me a while before before I was wise to the deception. I must have been six or seven (or even older) when I recognized that Santa Claus and my mother had the same handwriting on the Christmas gift tags.
“Who told you,” I asked?
“Nobody!”
“Was it someone at school?”
“No-o-o-o,” he said (not fooling me at all). Right then the network queued up the Linus and Lucy song and we became engrossed with the cartoon. By the time it was over we had forgotten the discussion. I did, however, bring the topic up the next day at dinner. Eventually, we pulled it out of him that our pastor’s son had told him at preschool that Santa was made up. Apparently my son’s friend had asked his mom the same question the day before.
My wife and I explained the historical origins of Santa Claus and left it with saying that he was indeed pretend, just like many of the bedtime stories that we read or the toys he plays with. He appeared to take it all quite well. It also seemed somewhat of a relief to have gotten it out in the open. While I do not mind celebrating certain cultural aspects of the Christmas holiday, I do not want the commercialism to take center stage in our household.
I should have known that things had really not been smoothed over. Not five minutes later he hit me with the obvious follow-up question.
“Daddy, is Jesus made up?”
It was then that the importance of modeling Christ to my children became clearer than ever before. No amount of explaining will ever be sufficient to prove to them that Jesus is real. My prayer is that by God’s grace He would continue to change me and make my heart worthy of their imitation.
Scott, what an opportunity! A made up Santa but a REAL Jesus! What a study in contrasts! It makes Jesus sooooo special to a little boy! Excellent!
We never did Santa…I didn’t see why when I became a Christian I had to adopt all the cultural traditions along with…You know my kids…now you understand why they are the way they are…LOL
Scott, I’m a little surprised because it makes me wonder if you ever told your kids that Santa was real. I don’t think it’s a super big deal… there’s a lot of pressure to want ones kids to have an enchanted childhood. But rather than asking your son who told him that Santa was made up… I would’ve assumed your response was to ask you son who ever told him Santa was real in the first place.
Have you posted about Santa before?
Perhaps I’m coming in to the middle of an on-going series of post or something.
@Debbie: Yeah, it was a great opportunity for contrasts. We’ve never really done Santa, either. There have been photos with Santa (e.g., Edward at church), some stories (e.g., J.R.R. Tolkien’s Father Christmas Letters), and the social exposure to it all. However, we do not give gifts to the kids from Santa or tell them that they need to be nice or they won’t get any presents, etc. The gift giving has always been done in a different light and we always talk about what it’s all about. Right now we’re also doing an Advent Jesse tree.
What’s kind of funny is that my daughter (about 2 1/2) is afraid of Santa, so we’re making a point now to tell her that there’s nothing to be afraid over. He’s not real we say (though I think it has more to do with the outfit than anything . . . seems like lots of kids those ages are scared by people dressed up in costumes, like mascots and the like).
@Baus: No, never posted about Santa before, nor have I ever told him that Santa was real . . . but that’s an excellent way of looking at it (wish I had been thinking better on my feet). Re-reading the post it may seem like we were disappointed in some way, but I have no special desire for the kids to have an illusionary childhood. The “relief” came because: 1) I had not given it any previous thought; and 2) he was not disappointed (i.e., probably didn’t have much/if any “faith” in Santa being real).
Santa is around our house like Dora the Explorer is around. The story isn’t brought up with hushed tones like it is some evil tool, but merely a fable that we share with our kids.
The truth of Jesus doesn’t compare at all and isn’t even brought up within the same context. When the kids raise questions about Christ, God, faith what have you we talk about it as if we were learning about why winter is cold or heat conducts through metal. Christ is a reality that we try to understand; I marvel when the kids ask questions about him or ask about God and am humbled by my attempts to do His glory justice.
The issue that I have with Santa is that the grandparents seem to really want to push the fable. I still get gifts from Santa and my inlaws insist that all the gifts that are left unwrapped under the tree are from Santa. I guess it isn’t a true issue right now since Fuller is only 2, but I can see it being a problem in a few years. I don’t want to hurt feelings, but I just don’t think it is a necessary fable to promote to my son. (And I guess it doesn’t help that my second favorite Christmas movie is Miracle on 34th Street.)
@stelmodad: Fable . . . that’s a good way to put it. And yes, it doesn’t even compare! Jesus is “real reality” as our pastor likes to say.
@mrscrumley: I can see how that could lead to some frustration. Some of our relatives do the fable thing, too, but I haven’t seen their enthusiasm match the ways they express God and Jesus. Of course, they are just as materialistic as anyone else, though, thinking more about receiving rather than giving.
@ mrs: Fortunately we don’t have any family pushing “Santa is the bearer of all good gifts” thing. I think my mom may have wanted to lean that way for ‘fun’ but she respected our decision to not propigate it.
Speaking from experience (no age comments, please)… even though we didn’t have Santa at our house, we obviously had to address it with the boys….he can’t be avoided. We didn’t have grandparents pushing it (it helped that one set was Jewish, but the other set was respectful of our wishes)However, we put Santa in the same category as a clown…after all, it wasn’t like we didn’t want the kids to have fun with it.He is just a guy dressed up in a Christmas time clown suit. It worked well…we took it down the path as it went…..Ask the boys, but I don’t think we scarred them for life…at least not over Santa.
I don’t celebrate Christmas…
But if I did, and had in-laws who wanted my kids to believe in Santa, I’d treat the situation as though they wanted my kids to believe in E.T. (or some other intelligent space alien, etc). We might love and enjoy E.T., but we don’t treat the story like its real. Period.
You have to be firm with the Grandparents. I mean, imagine if you told them you weren’t doing Christmas anymore! You guys have it easy.
[quote post="782"]I don’t celebrate Christmas…[/quote]
Is it for these reasons?
Well, not those reasons exactly, no.
About half of those reasons fall under what I like to call “the genetic fallacy”, and about half lean in the general direction of my reason.
The reason I don’t celebrate Christmas is because I believe in the much maligned, much misunderstood, much distorted “regulative principle.” Now, there are plenty of folks who also believe in the regulative principle and celebrate Christmas… and that’s for two reasons:
1) the regulative principle doesn’t tell you anything about what God actually prescribes as “worship” (it just tells you that only what God prescribes is what must be done, and that alone).
2) some manage to have constructed a sort of non-Christ-ian, non-holiday, type of mere cultural event in which they can participate in clear conscience.
As for me, if did Christmas, it would be something worshipful, something I did specifically because I’m a Christian, something about God coming into the world –not about the fact that “everybody else seems to be doing something seasonal, so I’m doing it too as part of the culture”. And, as it is, I don’t do anything worshipful in that sense unless I think God requires it… and I don’t think He requires it of me, so I can’t do it –that’s the regulative principle.
Most people who like to object to this think they have heard all they need to about the regulative principle. If someone wants to find out more about it, I can recommend some readings… but if all someone wants to do is call me a backward Puritan and Scrooge, I can’t say I’m interested in casting the bling-bling to skeptical hogs (if you know what I mean).
Anyway, trying to explain why Grandma and Grandpa can’t “simply give their own grandchildren a gift!” is not facilitated by attempting a theological conversation with old folks either.
My only frustration with Christmas it that it tends to prompt us toward heaping significance on this holiday season while letting the rest of the year go by relatively symbol/ceremony free. Granted, there is some season of celebration around Easter, but look at the attention and ceremony we give Christmas and the relative cold shoulder we show the rest of the year…
To me, I like the symbolism wrapped up in the Advent, the joy expressed in the celebration of Christmas morning and the excuse to gather together and remember its significance. All I want now is for us to do something on par with this the other eleven months of the year.
I think I share Baus’s #2 and stelmodad’s frustration. Also, the “compulsion” versus the “desire” to give gifts bothers me, too. Whether it comes from retailers or peer pressure, it can be spiritually and financially unhealthy.
Scott, you believe in the regulative principle and celebrate a non-”ecclesial” Christmas?
I’m not sure how that follows with sharing Stelmodad’s frustration (which I interpret as a longing for a more ecclesial-holiday structured year).
Clarify?
No, I’m not saying that I believe in exactly the same “much maligned” regulative principle as you do, just that I am nodding my head alongside any criticism of a secularized Christmas which has all of the trappings (and I don’t mean Santa), but none of the substance. I suppose the question I’m exploring is the whole idea of redeeming vs. abandoning Christmas. In terms of what Stelmodad said, I think that the wonder and joy over God’s amazing grace in Jesus Christ ought to be part of our worship 24/7/365 (at least that’s how I read it and not as a call for an ecclesial calendar…I’m sure he’ll clarify, too). And if none of this makes sense I’m blaming it on an accumulated lack of sleep.
Without falling too willfully into a larger trap that I’ve made for myself – I am for an ecclesial calender.
[quote comment="9172"]Without falling too willfully into a larger trap that I’ve made for myself – I am for an ecclesial calender.[/quote]
Well, not what I thought you were saying, but I don’t completely disagree, either. Take the analogy of a first grade classroom. No one would criticize a teacher for walking up to a student, leaning over his shoulder, grabbing his hand, forming it around the pencil and showing him how to write. That’s exactly what is happening with Advent and Lent. We are being trained to fix our eyes on Christ and die to self daily. The important thing to remember is that the principles are patterns for everyday living, not just when the holiday rolls around on the calendar. I’m not going to throw them out just because there are abuses, any more than I’m going to empty my liquor cabinet because there are alcoholics.
I do think that the church can do a much better job at articulating this from the pulpit and creating an understanding among their congregations of the distinction between the religious and secular aspects of Christmas.
This is getting slightly off topic (and opening another can of worms), but I think there is also a tendency for us to compare Christmas to the syncretism of Caananite relgion with Israel. I just don’t see it that way in our modern culture. It’s marketing and commercialism — not paganism.
I’m a bit two (or three) faced about ecclesial calenders and such things but I’ve not found a sweet spot. I’m a grown man, who’s acknowledged his own sin, his faith, the greater church it is a part of and the cultural models that it supports or confronts but I find myself though in this quandry. I want both freedom from mindless conformity and a church or culture to remind me of where my priorities should be.
Businesses may have commercial motivations to use this season to help peddle their wares, but money or not it is good and holy to both acknowledge and rejoice in the incarnation of our Lord and Savior.
I may not be fully aware of what I’m asking for when I use phrases like ecclesial calender, but the notion of having pace of life which is constantly reminded of God’s redemtive work sounds like a good thing to me.
This is a really interesting conversation. And I am enjoying reading all of your comments about it.
Right now I am in a spiritual place where I think I need to be the first grader with a teacher holding my hand to write. I had a bad Christmas last year with too much focus on the material and consumerism. I am embracing Advent so that I am forced to focus on the celebration of the birth of Christ. (Side question: celebration is different than worship, right?) And as a bonus, I think we are focused more on family togetherness right now, so that helps.
Celebration is not different than worship (as far as the regulative principle applies to celebration) when that celebration is thought to be basically “Christian” in character.
Example: We celebrate Thanksgiving as Christians (we give thanks to our Lord Jesus), but we celebrate it because we are Americans. It’s not a “Christian” celebration, it’s an American one. It’s something we view as part of being American, not as part of what it means to be Christian.
I hope the distinction is clear enough.
Now, typically, you’re going to be celebrating Christmas because you’re a Christian. That is, you see it as part of your practicing the Christian faith and life.
So, considering the regulative principle then takes us entirely out of the “redeeming vs. abandoning” continuum. There are two contrary pieties here; two alternative conceptions of spirituality. One is rooted in an ‘ecclesiastical calendar’ type conception (even if the traditional ritualism is removed, as it is in evangelicalism), and the other is rooted in the regulative principle.
Redeeming or abandoning Christmas (or any other “Christian” holiday/celebration), and the whole question of commercialism and/or syncretism, only makes sense in terms of a ‘calendar’ type conception. The regulative principle offers an entirely new way of approaching the whole question. It provides us with radically different assumptions concerning Christian faith and practice; Christian piety / spirituality.
@stelmodad: I like what you’re saying about pace of life…the day, the seasons, etc. all have a shape given to them by the Creator (something we are increasingly losing touch with in our face paced culture).
@mrs: We’re all like first graders!
@Baus: Since Christmas has now become a stand-alone secular/cultural holiday, the progression would look something like this:
Paganism ==> Christianized (Solstice) ==> secularized Christmas
You said that even though Thanksgiving it is culturally celebrated “because we are Americans,” we still can celebrate it “as Christians.” Since the Native Americans started the idea of harvest celebrations, the historical movement of Thanksgiving looks similar:
Animism ==> Puritanism ==> secularized Thanksgiving
Why is it okay for a Christian to celebrate Thanksgiving alongside of millions who don’t believe in a God to thank, but it’s not okay for a Christian to celebrate Christmas under the same circumstances? Wouldn’t the regulative principle apply to Thanksgiving, too? I don’t see the point in feasting and thanking the god of Chance, so it has to be celebrated “because I’m a Christian.” If I wasn’t a Christian, then I’d probably ditch Thanksgiving. It’s too much work!
What other holidays (religious, secular or blended) do you think are impacted by the regulative principle?
Scott, I’m starting off by looking at Christmas apart from any genetic concerns. It doesn’t matter to me if in its historical development it had pagan and/or syncretistic origins. I think that kind of thinking is fallacious:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genetic_fallacy
http://www.fallacyfiles.org/genefall.html
Let’s take a Christmas observance in it’s best case scenario form. It’s a worshipful celebration of the anniversary of one of the most momentous events in Redemptive History: The Incarnation. There may be nonChristians today trying to co-opt it for consumeristic purposes… but that has nothing to do with the manner in which we would ourselves observe this holy day.
So, for arguments sake, you and I are observing this Feast because we are Christians; because we are acknowledging a special act of God in saving His people. This is what our Christmas celebration is, and nothing else. Christmas, for us, is not what others do or don’t understand, or what they do or don’t do. It is rather, for us, what we ourselves understand and are doing.
In these terms, we are understanding Christmas to be something we do because we are Christians. We participate in it as part of what it means for us to live the Christian life. If we lived in any other culture, at any other time (A.D.), we could and would still recognize the Incarnation via Christmas or what would amount to a Christmas-equivalent.
Not so with American Thanksgiving. It is true that various other cultures and societies throughout history had and have Harvest Feasts, and the majority of these may be cultic (worship-ish) in nature. But American Thanksgiving is not an abstracted Harvest ritual. It is a peculiar national (not to say “government appointed,” although it also became that) observance, directly related to the history of this country’s founding through its first English settlers. If the “Pilgrims” were Jews, of Deists, or African Voodooists, or even Roman Catholics… I and you as Americans could still observe this memorial as what we are: Calvinists –worshipers of the Lord Jesus.
And yet we would do it because we were Americans, not matter what our religion was, and no matter to Whom we were or were not offering our thanks. In this regard it parallels OktoberFest, or Timbucktoo’s Independence Day. If you and I were Bavarians or Timbucktooians, we would celebrate those occasions because we were Bavarian or Timbucktooian, and by God’s grace we would yet do it as Calvinists.
In Old Covenant times we might consider the difference between the Cultic Feasts which God appointed, particularly the “Big Three” and the Sabbath as compared to national celebrations not of the Lord’s ordinance, and yet legitimate on cultural grounds: Purim, Chanukah, and others such festivals.
In fact, birthdays and wedding anniversaries fall into this latter category. We do them because we are born and married… and yet we do them as Christians.
Is the distinction any clearer?
Well, I see my justification for not celebrating Christmas is on here. Let me defend my claims against the claim made in this thread that I committed the genetic fallacy.
I have to admit that according to the definition provided that I would indeed commit this fallacy, but I feel I have liberty to do so (bear with me). Think of the Christian life: we commit the “appeal to authority” fallacy everyday by pointing to the Scriptures.
A. The Scriptures say that Jesus is the Christ.
B. The Scriptures are always right.
C. Therefore, Jesus is the Christ.
Is this a logical argument? No. Not by any means, and atheists have a field day with it. You could also argue that the existence of God is disproved by the argument from perfection.
The point is that fallacious reasoning can be pointed out everywhere at every time. Does that exclude me from the logical fallacies? No of course not. I’m just trying to illustrate that we are all guilty in one way or another. Here is an example of truly committing the fallacy.
REALLY BAD ARGUMENT AGAINST CHRISTMAS
A. Catholics invented it.
B. Catholics are wrong.
C. Therefore, Christmas is wrong.
I don’t appeal to this line of argumentation. I want to illustrate that, I believe, Christmas is not of God. Remember that Yahweh didn’t think highly of Baal and the associated worship with that false deity.
Just some thoughts.
your all gay
I knew that I would have to re-install that Troll Cap plugin again.
I’m just trying to figure out the implications of “your all gay.” Was there an “’s†missing and is it supposed to read “your all’s gay” – making some kind of statement against my laundry detergent?
If the “r” was to be “‘re” then have we all been found out as “homosexuals” or are we all just really happy to be blogging here?
I think he must have meant “gay” in the stupid sense (it’s a versatile word, you know). If you want to give him more credit, then you could say that using the name “guy” also implied that we were all girly men for even debating this topic.