As a child I do not remember celebrating Santa. There were not "gifts from Santa." My father certainly never dressed up as Santa. I was never told to "be good because Santa is watching" or any of that kind of thing. St. Nicholas came on December 6th and sometimes he put candy or small toys in my shoes and sometimes he brought a wrapped present in the morning. But, Christmas was about Jesus. We had an advent wreath and we faithfully lit the candles and said our prayers and then Jesus was born on Christmas and we got gifts from Mom and Dad and extended family, etc. That was that.
(Odd Side Note: Although this is how I remember things, a while back as I was going through some of my childhood items, in a scrapbook my mom had kept, I came across an article in the local newspaper that I had written and guess what it was about? It was a letter I had written to Santa!!! I think I was in the fifth grade. I asked for world peace. How noble is that? In any case I do not remember writing the letter and I certainly do not remember ever believing in Santa so perhaps we had to write such a letter for class or something, that is my only guess.)
I now have children and as the oldest two were getting old enough to pay attention to such things (somewhere between 2 and 4 - possibly one was 2 and the other 4 or something like that), I calmly sat them down and explained that Santa was not real and that what "the world" considered Santa was actually a glorification of St. Nicholas. I explained the story of St. Nicholas - leaving candy in the children's shoes and throwing money in windows for the poor girls' dowries. I proceeded to give them small gifts, and/or to celebrate the feast of Saint Nicholas. (I know one year for whatever reason I did not have gifts ready - I think maybe we had been sick - so I made a special dessert and we sang "Happy Birthday" to St. Nicholas.) That was all fine and dandy.
It was the next year, I believe, when she was in Kindergarten, that Rebekah asked me before each gift was opened, who it was from. I answered her truthfully that it was from Mom and Dad or Grandma or Aunt whoever, etc. That year I had gotten a bit overzealous in my shopping and decided to bless the children with ADDITIONAL gifts on Epiphany (I called them "Kings Gifts"). So not only had they gotten Christmas presents from Mom and Dad and all their extended family, they got ANOTHER gift in January to celebrate the arrival of the three wise men.
About a week later as I was taking down our Christmas decorations (which normally happens for us on the Baptism of the Lord) Rebekah made a comment. She said, in a mournful serious tone, "Santa did not bring us any gifts. We must have been bad." And my heart broke for her, but what could I do? It was too late for Santa to come and I had already explained that he was not going to come anyhow. How could she not "get it"?!?!
So another year or two passed and she no longer asked me about Santa, but then I overheard her tell someone, "Mom does not believe in Santa, but we (as in her and her siblings) know he is real."
Another year or two passed and now we are up to this year, this very evening, I believe she has finally reasoned out how her understanding of Santa (which I would argue is different from my attempts to make him a displaced St. Nicholas) fits in with the real reason for this season, the birth of Jesus. Tonight she was eating dinner with the rest of the children at the table. From the kitchen, I overheard her say,
"the one gift Santa can give God is his heart. He lets God use him as an instrument of peace."
All I can say to that is "well-said, dear daughter, well-said."
No comments:
Post a Comment