About a month ago, Mikayla ran up wiggling a very LOOSE tooth. This posed a couple of difficulties for us. First, I had a daughter a little afraid that it would hurt or bleed (even though it was the third loose tooth). Second, we needed to tell our children the TRUTH about the Tooth Fairy and Santa Claus, stat! Jeff and I spoke with the girls about the Easter Bunny back in the spring right before Easter. You can read about that here.
Since it was so close to Easter when we had that talk, we didn't discuss Santa and the Tooth Fairy and had every intention of returning to that discussion at the "right time." The time is never right (at least in our house) until your daughter is about ready to lose that third tooth! So, I sat the girls down and explained to them that Jeff and I have pretended to be Santa or the Tooth Fairy in the past, but we are not going to do this anymore. I explained that we want our focus to be on Jesus during holidays, not Santa or the Easter Bunny. This went really well. There were no hysterics or tears (I had planned for both). Susannah doesn't even seem to care one way or the other. Mikayla has had some questions, but hasn't been upset by the information at all. She was more upset to realize that Jeff and I were eating "Santa'a cookies!" I had a little more difficulty in convincing her the Tooth Fairy wasn't real. Her main argument was that,"The Tooth Fairy is just really fast so you don't see her." It took a little time, but I finally had her convinced.
First of all, let me say this. When Mikayla was little, I was on the fence about even starting a tradition of celebrating Christmas with Santa Claus. Unfortunately, I was convinced that it was a "necessary" part of childhood and I would hurt my daughter if I didn't follow this tradition. At this time, my main issues with not celebrating Christmas with Santa or Easter with the Easter Bunny centered around focus. I felt like observing these traditions could easily lead to a self-centered holiday instead of a Christ-centered holiday. The blog post that motivated our family to oust the Easter Bunny is here.
"The Easter Bunny, Santa, Tooth Fairy, etc. are all characters that families tell their children to believe in. They can't see these characters, the kids learn about them from what their parents tell them and one day they find out that it was all a myth. And then there is God; the kids can't see Him, they learn about Him primarily from their parents and a naive mind could then think that God is mythical as well...I think there is great potential for confusion. The truth about God is the most important thing that I will teach my children and I want to avoid things that could confuse them."
I was really convicted after reading this that we really needed to change some things. This conviction only grew stronger as I continued to read her post on Santa Claus.
This is an except from an ebook called Treasuring God in our Traditions by Noel Piper. You can download it here.
"Think how confusing it must be to a literal-thinking, uncritical preschooler. Santa is so much like what we’re trying all year to teach our children about God. Look at the “attributes” of Santa:
• He’s omniscient—he sees everything you do.
• He rewards you if you’re good.
• He’s omnipresent—at least, he can be everywhere in one night.
• He gives you good gifts.
• He’s the most famous “old man in the sky” figure.
But at the deeper level that young children can’t comprehend yet, he is not like God at all. For example, does Santa really care if we’re bad or good? Think of the most awful kid you can remember. Did he or she ever not get gifts from Santa? What about Santa’s spying and then rewarding you if you’re good enough? That’s not the way God operates. He gave us his gift—his Son—even though we weren’t good at all. “God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us” (Romans 5:8). He gave his gift to us to make us good, not because we had proved ourselves good enough."
For our family, this was a huge change in focus. Naturally, since I like to talk, I told some of my friends at work about our decisions. I was actually quite excited to do so, but could only explain it in 30 second snippets between patient care (I am a hospital nurse). I have received a huge amount of support from several friends, especially those that made the decision to never to start the Santa/Easter Bunny tradition in the first place. Others have been in complete disbelief and have voiced concerns that my girls will "ruin" things for their children. Although this is the decision that my husband and I have made for our family, we know it is our personal family decision and have no desire to impose it on others. My girls have been told not to "spoil" things for other children, however I am fairly certain that if they are asked about Santa, they might just tell you the truth about Jesus!
Luke2:14 “Glory to God in the highest heaven,
and on earth peace to those on whom his favor rests.”
Just in case you are wondering, this has not affected my children's ability to pretend, play, or use their silly imaginations!
