AIM Pt 4: Blowing the lid on Santa

I’m gonna let you in on a secret and it might change your life forever…. If you don’t want Christmas spoiled for the rest of your life then don’t read on!  Here’s my earth shattering secret… hold onto your hat… send the children outside… because… Santa Claus is your… parents!!

In the perhaps misguided pursuit to be some kind of parents worthy of the name we told our daughter the truth about the big man in the red suit.  We can debate this issue later in the comments if you must and before you give up on us entirely and label us killjoys we still play the game; we still put out our stockings, we still imagine he’s climbing down our non-existent chimney and filling our pillowcases with treaties.  So knowing the secret hasn’t spoiled the day for us but yes, we are those parents.

Even though she knows the shocking truth about Santa, if you were to ask our daughter what Christmas is about she will still answer with great gusto – presents!  That’s where it’s at people.  And again, trying to be good parents here, we have attempted to teach our child good values at this indulgent time of year.  “Yes dear, that’s only part of it but…”  aaaand you see her eyes glaze over.  However as I thought more about it I thought, well is it necessarily a bad thing that children’s entire focus at Christmas is to be receiving great gifts?  I’m gonna put myself out on a shaky limb here and say that it’s possibly not a bad thing.  Fellow parents; put down your rocks and hear me out…  

Letting Christmas be mostly about presents isn’t necessarily a bad thing because I think it says something quite amazing about parents rather than about a child’s greedy little heart.  A parent’s love is that the very reason that my daughter (and other people’s daughters) can say with great certainty that Christmas is about presents is because they know their mum and dad (and Grandparents) love them and we are more than willing to indulge them and fill the house with crappy plasticness over the festive season, (which will eventually make it’s way to Trademe or the scrapheap by November next year).  It doesn’t matter how good or bad she’s been during the year my daughter knows the threats regarding Santa ring hollow and she will still receive plenty of Christmasy goodness come December 25^th.

In other words, her faith is secure that she will receive good things because she trusts that her mum and dad love her.  In the same way our faith in God can be secure that we will receive good things [things for our good] because we know that God loves us.  We know this because he has graced us with his presence (get it?) in the person of his son, Jesus.  Who lived and died to cleanse us from our sin so we could be with him forever; who incidentally is the reason we celebrate Christmas at all!  If he did not spare us his very own son, why would he then spare us anything else?

Christian; you are loved, you are part of God’s family and part of being in his family is that God will never cast you away and he is eager to give you his Spirit, grace, mercy, love and yes, stuff.  Perhaps not the stuff you crave now, (like the pillow pet my daughter desperately desires and will never receive from me.  Gran if you are reading this – do what you will with this information…), but certainly what He knows you need.  Merry Christmas!

AIM pt 1: You will be saved through childbearing
AIM pt 2: I'm sorry, I just don't remember your name
AIM pt 3: In memory of summers past