Christians, tell your children there is no Santa Claus

[Emily~Anne]

Hmmmm...

Whenever people get into such a riot over whether we are allowed to tell our children a story about Santa or not, I often wonder if the people who say we shouldn't tell them about Santa because it's a lie ever read their children any fictional stories at all. What must a bedtime story be like if it's all nonfiction? Tonight dear child, we are going to read Chapter 3 in our science textbook about the life cycle of the frog..."a frog starts out as an egg, a tadpole comes out of the egg, it eats and grow legs and loses it's tail and then becomes a frog."

Because if we want to look at everything we say and do as being literal, then reading your child a fictional story would very well be telling your child a lie.

I havent read your whole post yet, but when I read my children fictional stories, they know it is fictional, therefore that is not lying by any means and does not compare to telling your children that Santa is real. Going to read the rest of your post now...

[Vickilynn]

I havent read your whole post yet, but when I read my children fictional stories, they know it is fictional, therefore that is not lying by any means and does not compare to telling your children that Santa is real. Going to read the rest of your post now...

Shalom,

I DID read the whole post and that's exactly my response. We don't tell our children that fictional stories are REAL.

People want to justify and rationalize lying to children and it just does not hold water against the Scriptures.

Bottom line is, if we tell children that santa is real, we are lying and the Bible calls that a sin.

There is no justification or rationalization that will change that.

[Vickilynn]

Shalom,

Colossians 3:

9: Do not lie to one another, seeing that you have put off the old self with its practices 10and have put on the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge after the image of its creator.

[Vickilynn]

Shalom,

The Chronological History of the Christmas Tree

St. Boniface Story

Why do we have a decorated Christmas Tree? In the 7th century a monk from Crediton, Devonshire, went to Germany to teach the Word of God. He did many good works there, and spent much time in Thuringia, an area which was to become the cradle of the Christmas Decoration Industry.

Legend has it that he used the triangular shape of the Fir Tree to describe the Holy Trinity of God the Father, Son and Holy Spirit. The converted people began to revere the Fir tree as God's Tree, as they had previously revered the Oak. By the 12th century it was being hung, upside-down, from ceilings at Christmastime in Central Europe, as a symbol of Christianity.

The first decorated tree was at Riga in Latvia, in 1510. In the early 16th century, Martin Luther is said to have decorated a small Christmas Tree with candles, to show his children how the stars twinkled through the dark night.

Luther's tree

Christmas Markets

In the mid 16th century, Christmas markets were set up in German towns, to provide everything from gifts, food and more practical things such as a knife grinder to sharpen the knife to carve the Christmas Goose! At these fairs, bakers made shaped gingerbreads and wax ornaments for people to buy as souvenirs of the fair, and take home to hang on their Christmas Trees.

The best record we have is that of a visitor to Strasbourg in 1601. He records a tree decorated with "wafers and golden sugar-twists (Barleysugar) and paper flowers of all colours". The early trees were biblically symbolic of the Paradise Tree in the Garden of Eden. The many food items were symbols of Plenty, the flowers, originally only red (for Knowledge) and White (for Innocence).

Tinsel

Tinsel was invented in Germany around 1610. At that time real silver was used, and machines were invented which pulled the silver out into the wafer thin strips for tinsel. Silver was durable, but tarnished quickly, especially with candlelight. Attempts were made to use a mixture of lead and tin, but this was heavy and tended to break under its own weight so was not so practical. So silver was used for tinsel right up to the mid-20th century.

The First English Trees

The Christmas Tree first came to England with the Georgian Kings who came from Germany. At this time also, German Merchants living in England decorated their homes with a Christmas Tree. The British public were not fond of the German Monarchy, so did not copy the fashions at Court, which is why the Christmas Tree did not establish in Britain at that time. A few families did have Christmas trees however, probably more from the influence of their German neighbours than from the Royal Court.

Decorating a Victorian household

The decorations were Tinsels, silver wire ornaments, candles and small beads. All these had been manufactured in Germany and East Europe since the 17th century. The custom was to have several small trees on tables, one for each member of the family, with that persons gifts stacked on the table under the tree.

(more here) http://www.christmasarchives.com/trees.html

[LossForWords]

If you consider telling your child a story about Santa a lie, then that is your conviction.

However, I do not consider telling my child a story about Santa a lie, I am not in the least convicted by my Lord about it.

Santa is a STORY that can last a long time, which is why it's such a fun story. There does come a time though that your child will either figure it out by himself, or you'll have to sit down and tell him it was all make-believe. I am not under the assumption though that the land of make-believe is a sin...

Anywho, it doesn't really bother me when people do not have a Santa. I have had children in my classroom before who do not participate with anything Santa at home. What tends to bug the poopy out of me is when a "Christian" tries to convince other "Christians" that they are living in sin and are condemed to hell because they choose to share an imagination with their child.

Some "Christians" celebrate the birth of Christ on Dec. 25th...some "Christians" choose to celebrate his birth on Christmas Eve (like my family did, and the tradition I will carry on with my own)...some "Christians" choose to throw a little Santa up in there (like my family did, and the tradition I will carry on with my own).

[Vickilynn]

If you consider telling your child a story about Santa a lie, then that is your conviction.

Shalom LFW,

Actually, that's not true.

If you tell your child that Santa is REAL, that is a lie.

It is not a conviction, it is not an opinion. If you tell your children that Santa is real, there is no other word for it than lie, which is a sin, whether you are "convicted" or not. It is Scripture not to lie. We don't have the choice to lie because we want to. Telling someone that santa is real cannot be justified or rationalized away and whether one "feels convicted" or not, the Word of G-d stands.

[MrsSealedEternal]

For the record, I choose to not celebrate a customary Christmas on December 25th with Santa, the tree and all the rest. It does not make sense to me after deeper study of the Passover and Festivals of the Lord and I no longer have a heart to participate in Christmas. I understand that many of them were rooted in false religious teachings and were taught that way in various cultures throughout time. You will find a whole array of people with differing beliefs about God and religion participating in various Christmas traditions, and I was merely pointing out that a few thousand years ago people liked to cut trees down and use them for decoration in honor of false gods and vain customs and find it interesting that this practice, for whatever reasons one ascribes to it, has been passed down to this day.

Does that mean everybody who has a decorated tree believes the same thing about it? Of course not! Can vanity be avoided when mankind is so vain? I don't see that as realistic!

As the verses in Jeremiah state, the tree itself is not God or worthy of worship, whatever attributes one would ascribe to it, as people have been redefining the meaning behind the decorating of their trees for quite some time now.

I merely qouted the verses and asked if you meant this tree because I do not believe there is any special powers in them and anyone who believes such things about their tree IS delusional, but you didn't hear it from me first.

I just wanted to point that out in case anyone else was reading something else into what I asked after qouting the verses in Jeremiah.

God did create everything, including trees, and I am grateful for them...on various days for diverse reasons.

[Vickilynn]

Shalom,

To further clarify, to LIE mans to tell a falsehood.To deceive

When a parents tells a child that Santa is real, this is a lie, a falsehood, a deception. There is no way to rationalize this as something good.

[LossForWords]

It all depends on how you were raised...

My dad is a pastor, has been since before I was born. He is well educated, receiving his doctorate from seminary when we were still small. My mom is a wonderful pastor's wife. We were typical pk's. We celebrated the holidays with religious beliefs and with family traditions. I KNOW my dad and my mom are not going to hell because we were allowed to celebrate with family traditions.

We thanked God for our blessings every day (focusing especially on it during the Thanksgiving holidays).

We celebrated Jesus' birth with a candle light service Christmas Eve night, my dad would read us the Christmas story Christmas Eve as we sat around a fire.

We went to church Easter Sunday and rejoiced at the resurrection.

We also dressed up for Halloween.

We also ate turkey for Thanksgiving.

We also awaited the arrival of Santa on Christmas morning.

We also looked for our Easter baskets that were hidden by that sneaky Easter Bunny as well.

I was not scarred for life when I found out that the characters I loved during the holidays were make-believe. I did not think my parents were heathen liars. And I think kids who turn around and question everything their parents told them and even question their beliefs when they find out some of the family traditions were stemmed in the imagination are actually carrying around something a little more.

I remember when we were little, my dad would come home in the late evening after working a full day at church and then attending classes so he could get his doctorate. We would hide around the house, and wait for him to find us so we could get our hugs and kisses. I remember my brother was horrible at hiding (which is typical with ego-centric young ones)...if he couldn't see you, then how in the world could you see him. He would hide his head and his big round bottom would be sticking straight up in the air. We loved this time!! My dad would come in and immediately see my brother's butt...yet he would walk around the room saying, "I wonder where Mikey is, I don't see him anywhere, is he in the closet?..nope...is he behind the curtains?...nope...where could he be?!?" Sometimes my brother would get so excited he would lift his head and yell, "Daddy I'm right here!" And ya know, I really couldn't imagine what our home would have been like if our parents took everything so literally when we were growing up. My dad would have come home, immediately gone to the pillow, lifted it off my brother's head and say, "I would see your butt sticking up." Where's the fun in that?

Some people who are so literal would then have to call my dad a liar and condem him to an eternity in hell because he played along with my brother and pretended he couldn't see him. Yeah, later on my brother finally caught on that you had to hide your entire body if you were going to create the elusion that you weren't in the room. But it's a game that lasted a few years before the magic of hiding his eyes so no one would see him wore off.

If telling a Christian that family traditions such as Santa is a blatant lie and that we are going against all Scripture and that if we tell our children the story of Santa they will be scarred for life and may even question their faith...then we would have to go back and think about everything our parents ever did with us, or everything we ever did with our children and try to make sure that we were careful and didn't step into a land with an imagination.

I throughly enjoyed my childhood...and I hope to pass that enjoyment on to my children. I KNOW that my parents will not be going to hell because they shared family traditions with us, and I KNOW that I will not be going to hell because I plan on sharing the family traditions with my little one.

And how sad that people try and diminish other people's family traditions because they can pick and choose a line from the Bible that says "thou shalt not lie."

[Emily~Anne]

Did anyone here at all say that anyone would go to hell for lying to their kids about Santa?