I admit it. I’m not a santa-endorser. He started as a nice thing and I like his history, but (I think) he’s morphed into an unhelpful distraction that has the potential to pervert the meaning of Christmas. So, here’s 5 reasons not to “do” santa:
1) Presents from santa do not promote thankfulness (at least thankfulness to the correct person). How do presents from santa fit into the understanding that, “Every good and perfect gift is from above” James 1:17, or the commandment to “Honor your father and mother,.” who are, after all, the gift-givers.
2) Telling our kids to “believe in” santa may sound, in their ears, similarly to telling them to “believe in” God or His Son. The similarity of language makes for some confusing distinctions.
3) Santa promotes getting, not giving, for children. Children only ever receive from Santa, rather than from a family member, from whom they receive and give back to in return.
4) Kids seem to glom onto santa and presents at Christmas time, which makes it really hard to make the deep, perhaps more difficult to see, truths of the season come alive. Santa gives them sweet treats that don’t satisfy, but dull their senses to the beauty of Christ.
5) As my pastor says, santa is bad news for a sinner in need of a gracious savior.
As usual, here’s a disclaimer. There are plenty of godly families who “do” santa and I respect them; they have grateful, sweet kids. And there are those, who in self-righteousness (I’m praying I don’t fall into this category), believe that santa is just satan spelled wrong. To those, I say, I’m all filled up on crazy here, you’ll have to go elsewhere 🙂