Redeeming the Season, Part 1: Rethinking Santa

I'm going to try to post a couple of blogs with ideas for ways to point this Christmas season to Christ. (I already posted about Rice and Beans for Advent a few days ago.) Before I begin though, in case I come across as someone "holier than thou" because we don't do Santa around here, don't be fooled. We're just trying to be intentional about putting our focus where it should be and doing the holidays a little bit different than the norm. I wish I could say that my focus is where it should be all the time, but that would be far from the truth. That's why I need to put these little things in place...to help me to try to remember that Christ should be at the center of all that we do. I wish it just came naturally to me all the time, but, unfortunately, it doesn't. So, if anybody else needs some help with that too...

Rethinking Santa

Santa Claus doesn't visit the Herron household. (Gasp!) I'll give you a minute to reread that, let it sink in, and feel sorry for our poor, deprived children. Okay, now I'll explain why he doesn't and why we don't feel like our children are missing out because of it. First, I don't think that Santa is bad. Afterall, the idea of Santa comes from the real Saint Nicholas who is famous because of his amazing generosity to the poor and his love for God. Our kids know all about him and that he was a real person, and they also know that Santa is not a real person. They know that God is the only one who "sees them when they're sleeping and knows when they're awake," and that the gift of God's son is not for those who are good enough, but because none of us are good enough. God actually does "know if we've been bad or good," (bad!) but His gift is for us anyway. And that is what we want to focus on at Christmas - God's amazing gift to us, not Santa's.

Because we are bombarded with Santa at Christmastime though, we have chosen to use the opportunity to teach the kids about who Saint Nicholas really was and what he did for Christ. Our hope is that that will spur them on to want to be like him and to also want to give generously for Christ. When they see someone dressed up as Santa, they assume that it's because that person wants to emulate someone who was such a generous and caring person. Each year on or around December 6th (which is actually St. Nicholas Day), we have our own little St. Nicholas party with a few friends, and the kids get to pretend to be him. We usually do some sort of craft related to him and read some of the true stories about him, and then the kids get to deliver goodies in secret to people in the neighborhood. We choose a few random houses to leave something at the door, and then they ring the doorbell and run away. And they love it. In doing it this way, they get to focus on the joy of giving like St. Nick, rather than the joy of receiving from St. Nick.


I know that there are people who think that we are somehow stealing an important part of our kids' childhood from them because Santa doesn't come down the chimney and deliver presents to them on Christmas Eve. I completely disagree. We just choose to make different memories that include leaving presents for Jesus rather than cookies for Santa Claus. I know that we should be focusing on what we can do for Jesus all year long, but shouldn't Christmas, when we celebrate His birth, be a time to ESPECIALLY focus on Him and what He did for us? That is the main reason that Santa doesn't visit our house. There are some others, but it is mainly because we don't want Jesus to just be the side story to Santa and reindeer and presents. I want the kids to be excited that Jesus is in the manger, not because Santa came down the chimney and left them lots of goodies. I want Jesus to be THE story and THE reason that we celebrate.

In a future post, I will give some ideas of how we try to get the kids excited about Jesus in the manger. (For those of you who couldn't care less and just want a few pictures of the kids, I'll try to get those up first!)