Guess what kids...

…Santa Clause is not real (and neither is the tooth fairy).  You can thank me later for letting your kids know the truth.  Now you are free to explain to them the real reason for Christmas. You’re probably not surprised that I didn’t lie to my kids about Santa Claus.  Actually, my parents never tried to pass off Santa as real either, so I guess you could say it runs in the family. 

Now before you turn me or my parents in for child abuse let me explain the problem with Santa Claus, and in a broader sense the commercialized, waterdown, poltically correct version of what we call Christmas.  Before I begin let me explain to you that I’m not history major.  I’m not going to lecture you on the historical basis for Christmas or argue that Jesus was born in some other month and Christmas is really a pagan holiday, but I am going to argue that the current version of the December 25th holiday robs us of celebrating what was the greatest gift given to mankind. 

The first problem I have with our current version of Christmas is Santa Claus.  I won’t go as far as a church in Georgia telling people that Santa Claus is Satan, but he’s pretty close.  Have you ever thought much about the logic of Santa Clause?  I’m not just talking about some person squeezing his fat body down chimneys, riding in a sleigh pulled by flying reindeer and delivering gifts to all the boys and girls in the world in one night. 

I’m talking about that flipping list he keeps.  How nerve-wracking to kids, constantly worrying if they were naughty or nice. What’s more is that Santa never gives the criteria for naughty or nice.  In all the Hallmark Christmas movies about Santa Claus he never tells us flat out what it takes to get on the nice list.  Is the standard set in stone?  Does it change?  What happens if I spill the milk on Christmas Eve, lie about to my parents and blame it on my brother?  What then?! Am I out, the day he’s supposed to show up?!  I couldn’t live with this kind of pressure.

“Oh come on L. Kyle, don’t be such a party pooper, of course kids don’t worry about that.”

Don’t they?  If a kid believes that some fat and jolly guy delivers gifts to them wouldn’t they worry about what gets them on the ‘nice list’?  What about kids who constantly hear from their parents that they are failures?  What hope do they have? Kids believe in Santa because they have faith; faith that mom and dad are telling them truth, faith in things unseen.  And it’s because of that faith that I want them to know the truth about Christmas. 

The second problem I have with December 25th is how water-downed it has become. Christmas should be a time to celebrate that God came down from heaven, down to humanity.  The God of the Bible isn’t a god who sits afar off, inaccessable, but He is a God who loves us so much that he came to us.  He came to us to provide relationship with Himself.  The fact that the Creator of the Universe came down to us is cause to celebrate.  It is a time to gather with our families and celebrate God’s goodness.

But the falacy with our culture is that the meaning behind the Hol(y)day is being stripped away.  God established feasts and festivals for the Nation of Isreal to hold every year so they would not forget what He did for them.  Likewise we should celebrate Christmas not just to buy stuff or have family dinners, but we should celebrate so that we never forget that God Himself came down to us, not to condemn us, but to bring us life. 

The meaning of Christmas is being stripped away not because political correctness, but people want to strip all refernces to God away from us. 

“No L. Kyle, I just don’t want to offend someone who may celebrate Kwanzaa or another holiday, that’s why I say ‘Happy Holidays’”

Nope. If that was the case then December 25 would not be a holiday in this country.  You see, everyone still wants to get the day off, everyone wants to get gifts.  Retailers plan for Christmas, they depend on Christmas to survive.  Our society still wants a day off and to give and get gifts, but it just wants to do it without mentioning God. 

“What about Easter L. Kyle, not a huge fuss over that.”

Of course not because Easter falls on a Sunday during the Spring.  Most of us already get Sunday’s off and retail isn’t dependent on the success of the Easter shopping season.  It’s almost laughable when Target advertises huge discounts for “holiday shopping”.  Or when retailers tell us that there only so-many days of the “holiday shopping season” left.  Do they think we are that stupid?  No they just want to strip God from our culture. 

According to the Education World website (go figure) December is a month of Multicultural Holiday Celbrations.  Here is their list:

Ramadan

Eid al-Fitr

Saint Nicholas day

Eid’ul-Adha

Fiesta of Our Lady of Guadalupe

St. Lucia Day

Hanukkah

Christmas Day

Three Kings Day/Epiphany

Boxing Day

Kwanzaa

Omisoka

Yule

Satumalia

Other than Boxing Day, which is celebrated in the UK, none of these holidays have gift giving as one of their major components except for Christmas.  Yet the “holiday shopping” season is supposed to multi-cultural.  But what are people shopping for?  Christmas gifts or “holiday gifts.”  And why does the mult-cultural shopping season end on December 24th?

It seems to me that people want all the pleasantries of Chirstmas without the meaning of Christmas.  “Give me gifts and a day off,” some would say, but don’t tell me about the real meaning behind it. 

The sad thing about this whole deal is that God gave us His Son as a gift and our society wants us to forget that.

“For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life." John 3:16

Leftovers enjoy.

L. Kyle.