Christians, tell your children there is no Santa Claus

[Emily~Anne]

I moved around alot as well (being a pastor's kid).

I've taught elementary children for 5 years.

I now work amongst Nazarene day cares and private schools.

In my experience, I would say that the children who do not believe in Santa are among the minority. I know in the past 5 years of teaching, I always had one or two children out of 25-30 that did not believe in Santa. And if you were to ask these children that believe if mommy told them Santa was real, if they were honest, they would say, "nope, I just believe."

I don't think LadyC's kids are in the minority. They were around kids all the time at school and during play time at home. During the holidays Santa is going to get talked about and children are going to believe. And I'm not going to sit them down and burst their imaginary bubble. Just as I'm not going to burst my child's bubble when he thinks he is hiding even though only his upper body is covered.

What grade did you teach? Most kids learn Santa is not real from their peers.

By the way, my husband says he quite frankly does not believe you and that you are saying that for the sake of argument. My husband also went to public school.

Guess what else? We have two children, and neither of them believe in Santa. They are ten and three. (Will be 4 on Dec. 11th)

But if they did persist in believing in Santa regardless of what we told them, then our children would most definately be idolizing Santa and that would concern us greatly.

[Vickilynn]

then how do you explain my kids having believed in santa?

Shalom LadyC,

Ummm, since we don't KNOW your children, you know that no one but you can answer that question.

Regardless of how they came to believe a lie, the point is, as I have said before, if a Christian parent knew their children believed a lie, it is the parent's responsibility to correct that lie and replace it with the truth. What if my child came to me and stated that they believed the world was created by an explosion rather than by G-d? It would be my responsibility to teach them the truth from the Bible. If I let them believe a lie, I am just as culpable and answerable to G-d for their belief in a lie as if I had told them the lie myself.

G-d expects US Christian parents to teach our children the truth from the Word and if they believe a lie, we are to teach them the truth.

Enough of all this man's justification for disobeying G-d's commands. There is no justification for lying and for perpetuating a lie. Not one. G-d's ways - not man's.

[Guest LadyC]

emily, i'm not trying at all to be offensive, but was there a reason you felt obligated to share your husband's opinion of LFW's post? he's not on the board, and it just seems to me that was rather unnecessary. i hope you don't mind me suggesting that maybe you could remove that comment from your post since it was rather antagonistic towards her.

[LossForWords]

I moved around alot as well (being a pastor's kid).

I've taught elementary children for 5 years.

I now work amongst Nazarene day cares and private schools.

In my experience, I would say that the children who do not believe in Santa are among the minority. I know in the past 5 years of teaching, I always had one or two children out of 25-30 that did not believe in Santa. And if you were to ask these children that believe if mommy told them Santa was real, if they were honest, they would say, "nope, I just believe."

I don't think LadyC's kids are in the minority. They were around kids all the time at school and during play time at home. During the holidays Santa is going to get talked about and children are going to believe. And I'm not going to sit them down and burst their imaginary bubble. Just as I'm not going to burst my child's bubble when he thinks he is hiding even though only his upper body is covered.

What grade did you teach? Most kids learn Santa is not real from their peers.

By the way, my husband says he quite frankly does not believe you and that you are saying that for the sake of argument. My husband also went to public school.

Guess what else? We have two children, and neither of them believe in Santa. They are ten and three. (Will be 4 on Dec. 11th)

But if they did persist in believing in Santa regardless of what we told them, then our children would most definately be idolizing Santa and that would concern us greatly.

Now see, this is where you are getting yourself into a bit of hot water...

Please go back and read some of my previous posts from the past year or so. You will see that my being a public school teacher and now working amongst private Christian schools is not a secret that I hide. I have posted several times in the Ladies Lounge as well as in the public forum that I used to be a public school teacher and that I now work for our district.

My father is currently a Nazarene pastor, he works at a Nazarene church in Texas at the moment...my dad has always been a Nazarene pastor. While growing up I lived in Ohio twice, South Carolina twice, Georgia twice, Tennessee, Florida, Texas, and I am now back in South Carolina. Growing up, I remember the majority of the younger children did believe in Santa...it was an older child who told me she didn't think Santa was real because she didn't think he could fly around the entire world in a night when half the world was in day light. So when I asked my parents if Santa was real, they said, "nope." Which is what I will do in return for my child when the time comes.

By the way, tell your "husband" I think he and his wife are just angry because there are people involved in this conversation that do not feel convicted about allowing their children to believe in Santa...and if we were all truthful...it's not the believing in Santa that actually offends you so much...it's that other people disagree with your philosophy.

You tell one person that you think their children are the oddity because in all your years you would say that chidlren believing in Santa though never being told he is real are in the minority. But when I post my opinion from my own experience (which would include moving around alot as well, being exposed to an extraordinary amount of children from all different backgrounds, teaching in public schools, and now being involved in the private aspect of schooling) about small children (I did say I taught elementary...kindergarten and first grade) not believing in Santa being a minority (especially amongst public school kids)...you get all hot and accuse me of lying.

How extremely un-Christian like behavior. Actually I'm quite offended that you or your husband would out right post that you think I'm lying just because my experience is different than yours. How rude and disrespectful.

[Emily~Anne]

Woah! I think you may be making too much out of it! I am sorry, but truly, children do alot of convincing other children that Santa is not real. They challenge them with questions like, "Oh yeah, well then what about people who dont have chinmeys and etc.?"

I did not expect you to get nearly so angry. I just do not believe that the majority of children will believe in Santa when their parents explain to them that the commercialized version of Santa is not for real and is just for fun.

By the way, while growing up I lived in Ohio, two towns in Maine, Rhode Island, 5 towns in Ontario Canada and then back to Ohio. As an adult I have lived in Idaho as well, and am now in Michigan.

[Smalcald]

I moved around alot as well (being a pastor's kid).

I've taught elementary children for 5 years.

I now work amongst Nazarene day cares and private schools.

In my experience, I would say that the children who do not believe in Santa are among the minority. I know in the past 5 years of teaching, I always had one or two children out of 25-30 that did not believe in Santa. And if you were to ask these children that believe if mommy told them Santa was real, if they were honest, they would say, "nope, I just believe."

I don't think LadyC's kids are in the minority. They were around kids all the time at school and during play time at home. During the holidays Santa is going to get talked about and children are going to believe. And I'm not going to sit them down and burst their imaginary bubble. Just as I'm not going to burst my child's bubble when he thinks he is hiding even though only his upper body is covered.

What grade did you teach? Most kids learn Santa is not real from their peers.

By the way, my husband says he quite frankly does not believe you and that you are saying that for the sake of argument. My husband also went to public school.

Guess what else? We have two children, and neither of them believe in Santa. They are ten and three. (Will be 4 on Dec. 11th)

But if they did persist in believing in Santa regardless of what we told them, then our children would most definately be idolizing Santa and that would concern us greatly.

Wow.

I don't have any statistics. But our experience with our kids is more like Ladyc, we have done nothing to encourage the big Santa belief, but all of their friends from school believe in Santa. I don't know we live in a small town in a rural area and maybe the kids just are more naive for a longer time? But anyway I think my daughter has a rich fantasy life which I am not going to squash, I want them both to LOVE Christmas and the Birth of their Savior, not dread it.

But we don't lie or go to great lengths to try to keep their belief in Santa going (I don't know if they actually do believe in Santa we have never really gotten down and said do you do you or do you not believe!) We just go with the flow and have a couple of gifts from Santa each year. I don't like Santa decorations or Santa based decorations, we have no Santa's in our home as I think that does start sliding toward a little idolatry. What we need to do is have Christ and the celebration of His birth swallow all of this nonsense up anyway. Kids love tradition, actually I do to, but kids really love it, and if we establish our Christmas traditions around Christ and His birth I think we will be doing fine.

[Guest LadyC]

i have no santa decorations either. but my christmas playlist has a great little thumbnail image of "santa" kneeling and praying to the baby Jesus in a manger. i think it's adorable, and says exactly what i feel is appropriate. santa is all loads of fun, but the true spirit of Christmas is the birth of Jesus and "santa" should always remember his place.

[LossForWords]

Woah! I think you may be making too much out of it! I am sorry, but truly, children do alot of convincing other children that Santa is not real. They challenge them with questions like, "Oh yeah, well then what about people who dont have chinmeys and etc.?"

I did not expect you to get nearly so angry. I just do not believe that the majority of children will believe in Santa when their parents explain to them that the commercialized version of Santa is not for real and is just for fun.

Older children do convince children that Santa is not real...which I said several pages back is what happened in my case. However, younger children often believe for no other reason than it's fun. They can't tell you how Santa finds their house at night, or how he gets in even if they don't have a chimney, or how they think reindeer are able to fly, or how Santa fits all those presents into his sleigh...as young children they just believe....they don't need an excuse. Just like some young children believe they can fly if they put on a cape. It's their imagination at work.

Of course the majority of children wouldn't believe in Santa if all parents sat their children down one day and told them that Santa wasn't real and that any story they hear, or program they watch, or other children they talk too are just fabricated...but the majority of children who believe in Santa aren't being sat down and told that whatever they hear at Christmas time about Santa is fake. The majority of children who believe in Santa just listen to the stories, watch the programs, and dream until they're too old to believe in the nonsense.

The reason why I am angry with you is because you intentionally tried to make it seem that I was lying about my experience. Other people see the maliciousness of your post as well. You can go back and try and defend it all you want, but it was rude and disrespectful and I believe hurts whatever message you are trying to relay to others. When you resort to name calling, while you are trying to make some one else look like the culprit, you are at the same time making yourself less credible.

I do not think I am wrong in being offended by your comment.

[Emily~Anne]

Lossforwords, I am sorry, I did not mean to offend you so highly.

I guess you and I just have very different experiences as far as wether children believe in Santa because of their peers or their parents. Your last post does sound more realistic than the way it sounded before. The scenario I always see is parents convince their children that santa is real, and peer children eventually convince them otherwise.

I guess the question I have, is how can a child believe in santa if their parents tell him santa is not real? Because wont the fact that there are no presents from santa specifically under the tree on Christmas morning raise quite a question in their mind?

[Vickilynn]

I do not think I am wrong in being offended by your comment.

Shalom LFW,

And, if you are offended, how are you to react? To come out swinging with hurtful personal attacks?

No, dear. The Bible has the answer that G-d wants us to do. Again, we are to walk in G-d's ways, not man's ways.

Matthew 18

15 "If your brother sins against you, go and tell him his fault, between you and him alone. If he listens to you, you have gained your brother.

21Then Peter came up and said to him, "Lord, how often will my brother sin against me, and I forgive him? As many as seven times?" 22Jesus said to him, "I do not say to you seven times, but seventy times seven.