Ready to Think About Santa Yet?

Ok, so there are 2 weird things about this post right off the bat:

1.  I’m referring to a Christmas character and it’s only October for crying out loud

2.   I’m talking about Santa – and this blog is supposed to be about the CHURCH calendar

Now here are the 2 reasons for why I’m being so weird:

1. In order to alter our thinking, and possibly traditions, about this key figure, we might need to start planning early

2. Santa, like it or not, is part of our culture and we need to figure out what we’re going to do with him in our families!

There are probably at least 3 options for how families can deal with Santa Claus:

(I’ll switch to letters now since the numbers are getting a little old)

A.      They can try to completely ignore him, focusing only on Jesus and the true Christmas story

B.      They can go along with the normal culture, embracing the jolly ol’ fellow, encouraging all the mall visits and naughty-and-nice lists

-or-

C.   They can proactively find a way to incorporate the legend of Santa into their family life, while clearly delineating his fictional aspects from the factual truths of Jesus.

Perhaps you can see where I am going with this.  :)

Years ago, when we first read Martha Zimmerman’s book about celebrating the Christian year (see sidebar for details), we were introduced to the concept of celebrating St. Nicholas Day.  I would venture to say that this has become one of our most favorite family traditions of all.  Not only does it cleanly and happily take care of the Santa/Jesus delineation, but it also has given us a whole new party day!

Our kids love St. Nicholas Day because it involves 4 things:  all things Santa, a party with friends, secretive giving missions, and STOCKINGS.  And truthfully, one of the things we love about giving stockings on St. Nicholas Day is that it spreads out the gift-giving a little bit.  The kids can really enjoy the things in their stockings, as opposed to them just being the “warm-up” to the real deal on Christmas morning.

(In our house we give stockings on St. Nicholas Day, a couple gifts on Christmas morning, and one more on Epiphany…. so it’s a full month of gifts all spread out.)

But the real best part for us is that on December 7, after St. Nick has been fully celebrated and honored, we put away all things to do with Santa, and the rest of the season is now freed up to focus on the true star, Jesus.  There seems to be a lot less confusion that way.

So, I write this now, to put a little niggle in your brain in case you, too, would like to celebrate Santa in this way.  As it turns out the man behind the legend, St. Nicholas, was quite a fascinating man and definitely worthy of emulation in some ways.  Perhaps this is the year you’d like to celebrate the true story as a family.

I know switching the giving-of-the-stockings date can throw people off, so put it on your calendars now- December 6 is St. Nicholas Day.  In the next couple of weeks I’ll post a little more detail about who St. Nicholas was, as well as some suggestions for how to specifically celebrate the day.

In the meantime, start gathering those stocking stuffers!