Santa Claus is Dangerous

What is Christmas truly about? If you ask the average Joe you'll probably hear that its about showing Christmas spirit or giving gifts or eating too much or seeing family. Earlier this week on a kid show my daughter was watching a frog explained that he had a star on his tree because every year the biggest prettiest star comes out for Christmas, or something like that. As a culture we have forgotten why we have a holiday on Dec. 25 every year.

Look at the things that we actually focus on during Christmas, family gatherings (not bad but not the point), giving gifts (they do serve a point but not the materialistic insanity that we have going on), Christmas Tree's (who remembers what point they serve), and lots of Christmas movies (that have nothing to do with the real reason for Christmas).

The real purpose of Christmas is to celebrate the birth of Jesus. That's it, that's all. But people who care little about Jesus or who actively hate Him still want to celebrate Christmas, no matter how much debt it puts them in. So I think that we as those who love Jesus should find ways to celebrate Jesus' birthday distinctively. Start some family traditions that are focused on Christ. For example my family tries to make Christmas feel like a birthday party for Jesus. We have a birthday cake, we sing the Happy Birthday song (I know it sounds awfully cheesy), we put up happy birthday banners, all aimed at keeping the main thing the main thing.

Now I want to share the really controversial thing that we do. We aren't teaching our kids about Santa Claus. Yes I know many of you are cringing right now (all both of you) but I really think that Santa is the chief distraction. In most American homes Santa has replaced Jesus. Think about how many cartoons kids will watch this year about Santa compared with cartoons about Jesus' birth. Santa is dangerous because he draws our kids hearts away from Jesus and focuses them on a fat guy offering them toys (sounds like a guy you don't want in your neighborhood).

So I want to challenge everybody to reconsider Santa and to be intentional about having a Christ-centered Christmas.

PS - the original version of this post was a lot more hostile and was originally titled Santa Claus is a tool of the devil, Edna talked me out of it.