In the weeks leading up to my first Christmas as a mom, a friend of mine whose daughter was a few years older explained to me that she and her husband had decided not to talk about Santa Claus as a family.
“It’s creepy,” she explained, “there’s a guy watching you sleep, deciding if you’re naughty or nice? I don’t want to teach my daughter that she gets presents for good behavior and coal for bad behavior, and if I spend less money on a gift than her friends’ parents, I don’t want her to develop a complex that they’re better than she is.”
I listened with interest, respecting that she had been a mom for longer than I had, and also fascination—no one I knew had grown up without Santa. Far from it: I remember one of my favorite prompts in a college creative writing class was the moment you realized Santa wasn’t real. It was so fun to go around the room and recount our stories, an early collective experience, a coming of age for millennials.
But was she on to something I hadn’t considered? Did the childhood belief in Santa cause more harm than holiday joy? Was this mythical figure taking away from the real meaning of Christmas?
Later that night, I pitched the idea to my husband: what if we decided not to celebrate Santa? I explained my friend’s reasons, and included the deeper theological reasons that I thought would resonate with him: Santa makes Christmas about presents, and we’re trying to teach our then only daughter that the true reason we celebrate is because the Son of God took on human flesh and came to dwell among us.
My poor, sweet husband’s face looked like the shocked and devastated descriptions of my writing class’ faces when they put the pieces together and realized Santa wasn’t real. To buy some time, he made one request:
“Before we decide,” he asked, “can we watch some of the old Christmas movies again?”
My parenting style is generally laid back. I’m a few weeks away from having three under three, and with pregnancies marked by extreme nausea and vomiting, I simply haven’t had the energy to be an overly structured mom. My two girls spend most of their days reading books, playing with Costco boxes that have been converted into space ships and pizza parlors, and running around together outside, collecting leaves and acorns and worms.
The one area where my husband and I have really prioritized our energy is in their spiritual formation, by incorporating the tenets of our faith into the everyday monotonous moments. It sounds simple, but it takes a surprising amount of mental energy, and like so many things, as we begin to see the very early buds of fruit, I think the things that you put great effort into are almost always worth the work.
As we thought through the Santa decision, we began by reflecting on our own childhoods. We both grew up believing in Santa Claus, and neither of us felt it had impacted our faith. Far from it, we both agreed that Santa was an easy tool to begin to paint a picture of God for our girls.
Mom and Dad may not always know everything, but the omniscient, omnipresent God does. Mom and Dad can’t take care of every child, but the eternal, unchanging love of God saved the whole world. The presents we receive at Christmas come in boxes and last a season, but the gift of God is that He sent His Son to walk among us, and now His Holy Spirit is with us at all times.
We’re a few weeks away from my third Christmas as a mom, and my daughter can recognize Santa when she sees a picture of a fat, jolly man with a white beard and a red coat. But more importantly, she is beginning to understand who Jesus is. At night, she knows if she’s scared she can say, “Jesus help me.” During the day, she recites her catechisms, explaining that there are “two natures of Jesus: fully man and fully God.” When we ask her why we’re celebrating Christmas, she can respond that it’s Jesus’ birthday, even if birthdays to her are still primarily about cakes and candles.
I don’t think the decision to include or exclude Santa as a part of our holiday traditions is something with a right or wrong answer. My friend’s daughter has always known Santa isn’t real, and her parents are working to build empathy and compassion within her as she interacts with friends who still believe. My daughters will have a coming of age moment when they realize that Santa is actually Granddad, and while they’re likely to be devastated, my goal in these early years is to instill the firm foundation that our hope is in Christ, not in the things of this world—Santa Claus included.
Natalie Gottlieb is a girl mom about to enter into the world of baby boys this spring! She works part time as a NICU nurse, but spends most of her time trying to figure out how to get her toddlers to eat vegetables and stop picking their noses. When she’s not changing big and little diapers, she loves spending time with her people, daydreaming about working out, and talking theology with her husband. She can talk all day long about hyperemesis, sleep training, and the world’s most elusive question: why is daylight savings still a thing??
