Mark and I have had a bit of a hard time deciding how we were going to deal with Santa. I came from a family where we played up Santa...left out the cookies and a note...and he'd always write one back. I'm not sure how we didn't recognize my mom's writing!?!? She tried to disguise it, but looking back, it seems so obvious! Mark's family didn't really do the whole Santa thing, so it was easy for him to lean more towards not doing it when I brought up the idea.
I don't think it's bad to allow your kids to believe in Santa, and I'm thankful to my parents for putting in the effort to make things so magical for us. I think we live in a much different world today, though. It is so much harder to keep the Truth in celebration when we are constantly bombarded with materialism and secularism. Without going on and on, we've decided to teach the kids about the real Saint Nicholas. If after hearing that story, and taking in everything around them during this season, they choose to believe that Santa is real, we're okay with that. We're not going to stifle their imaginations. I'm pretty sure that not matter what we say to Karis she is going to believe. We realized Ethan was a little too "practical" for that kind of thing last year, although sometimes I think he wants to believe...it just doesn't make sense in his analytical mind.
At first I worried about losing some of the excitement and magic on Christmas morning, but I still couldn't sleep on Christmas Eve after I knew that it was just mom and dad. And some of my most vivid memories from Christmases past aren't even related to Santa Claus. I'll still take our kids to see Santa, and I don't discourage people from asking them what Santa brought them. I just felt the desire to teach them the truth and allow them to choose if they would believe...
I found a really great story about the real St. Nick here: http://www.stnicholascenter.org/Brix?pageID=167
1 comment:
Hey thanks for the website! I printed it off to read to my kids. See ya Tuesday!
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