How We Deal with Santa: The Legend of Saint Nicholas (Advent Week 3)

A few weeks ago, Big Brother came home glowing and announced, "My teacher Ms. M told me that if I write Santa a letter he will bring me the toy that I want!  Can I write him a letter?"  This idea was totally novel--and clearly thrilling--to him as we have never talked about Santa at our house.   For a fleeting moment, I saw the allure of Santa:  the sparkle in Big Brother's eye, the innocent delight; for a moment I doubted our decision not to play the Santa game with him.   But then he kept talking.  And suddenly it wasn't innocent delight I was seeing--it was lusty greed and once again I was glad for the route we've chosen.

In past years, if he asked about Santa, we just said he was a pretend character some people like to decorate with at Christmas.  With him attending preschool this year, I knew I'd have to deal with it more directly.

As part of our Giving and Serving week of our advent celebration, we talked about Saint Nicholas.  I had purchased the book The Legend of St. Nicholas  by Dandi Daley Mackall from Christianbook.com, but after his letter-writing request, I moved it up on our schedule of activities.

This book tells the story of a boy selfishly focused on getting things at Christmas.  He hears a store Santa telling the Legend of St. Nicholas:  his parents teach him that God loved us so much He gave us the gift of His son; when he is left orphaned he decides to give secretly to meet the needs of those around him. Upon hearing this tale, the boy in the frame story experiences a total change of heart and cheerfully buys presents for his siblings and generously purchases toys to donate to kids in needs. 

With 4-6 sentences per page, this book is fairly text heavy for young kids.  We lost two-and-a-half-year old Sis almost immediately and I had to work to keep four-year old Big Brother focused.  The illustrations are lovely, but this book is clearly about making a specific point, and is not truly compelling literature, with the boy's radical about-face feeling a bit corny.  However, it is the best book I could find about St. Nicholas and the point it makes is the point I want to make with my children, so it's a good tool for our family. 

After reading, we discussed that Santa's real name is St. Nicholas and that he was a real person who lived a very long time ago.  He loved God so much that he gave other people lots of gifts to share God's love with them.  I explained that he was such a special gift-giver that even after he died, many families like to pretend that he brings the presents on Christmas still, but really moms and dads buy presents for their children. 

Many people think I'm a party-pooper not to include Santa in our Christmas celebration and I certainly don't think this is a black and white, right versus wrong decision.  However, I fear that encouraging faith in an unseen fictional Santa would damage my parental credibility as I encourage faith in an unseen living God.