A Santa we can happily celebrate

Ian Carmichael, Matthias Media’s publications director, introduces another new resource—the first of a whole bunch being released this month.

At a Christmas Day church service I attended some years ago, the service leader started reading what he thought was a pretty humorous debunking of the “Santa delivering toys to every home on Christmas Eve” story.

Perhaps you’ve heard it. It basically makes fun of the story by showing its absurdity. Here’s one part of it to give you a taste:

Santa has 1/1000th of a second to park, hop out of the sleigh, jump down the chimney, fill the stockings, distribute the remaining presents under the tree, eat whatever snacks have been left, get back up the chimney, get back into the sleigh and move on to the next house… Assuming that each child gets nothing more than a medium-sized Lego set, the sleigh is carrying 321,300 tons.

The service leader finished with the words, “So if Santa wasn’t dead before, he certainly is now!”

The only problem was, most of the parents making their annual visit to church for Christmas—sitting besides their little kids—didn’t seem to agree with the service leader that what he had read was funny. Indeed, many were very angry. I didn’t see any parents literally putting their hands over their kids’ ears, but I’m pretty sure many of them had the urge to do so—or at least would have done if they’d known what was coming.

It was a pretty stark reminder that those who want to consciously step away from the modern Santa myth—whether because of Christian convictions or for other reasons—face somewhat treacherous waters, particularly when navigating the sensitivities of other parents.

For our part, my wife and I didn’t actively deny the Santa story with our kids, but nor did we go out of our way to promote the story and fool our kids. As Christian parents, we certainly didn’t want to lie to them. And, not surprisingly, without parental duplicity in the myth, our kids worked out pretty quickly that there was something pretty fishy about the whole Santa thing.

The trouble came when our daughter told a preschool friend of hers that Santa wasn’t true. That friend's mother made her absolute displeasure at this crime against Santa quite plain to us. She was not happy.

Of course, some Christian parents acquiesce and go along with the myth, rationalizing that there really isn’t any harm in it. Others disagree and pursue a more aggressive scorch-and-burn approach, effectively saying to other parents: “Why should I lie to my kids so that you can lie to yours? After all, we all know what ‘Santa’ is an anagram of!”

Thankfully, I think author Annie Kratzsch and illustrator Tessa Janes have provided a much more positive way forward. They have written and beautifully illustrated a new children’s book called Just Nicholas that gives parents a new way of talking about Santa with their kids.

Just Nicholas is based on the true story of Saint Nicholas of Myra, the man who gave what he had to help others because he was grateful for what God had given to him. It carefully undermines the moralistic Santa that supposedly rewards children who have been ‘good’, and instead points to the beauty of God’s grace in giving us a gift that was completely undeserved.

In concluding the story, Annie Kratzsch is not afraid to say to the kids that some of the things that are now said about Saint Nicholas are “imagined” and “silly stories” (unlike the true original story). But her goal and emphasis is to encourage our kids to remember not just the heart-warming true story of Nicholas, but also the wonderful true story of Jesus, God’s greatest gift.

Available to order online from:

• Matthias Media (US)
• Matthias Media (Australia)
• 10ofThose (UK)