What about Christians and Santa Claus?

Providence Baptist Church

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How should Christians think about Santa Claus? If you're in America that is, we grew up with the tradition of Santa Claus when we were little children and for some of us it can be difficult to let go and things that we haven't maybe thought through.

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And so I want to just take a couple minutes here and talk about the idea of Christmas and Santa Claus and all of these things.

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So the first thing I want to mention is that Christians should have a robust imagination.

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We should be able to imagine things and play pretend with our children. All these things are good things.

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All these things actually stand in a long line of tradition with Christianity. You think of C .S.

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Lewis and the Chronicles of Narnia or back further than that John Bunyan and Pilgrim's Progress or Tolkien's The Lord of the

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Rings, The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings trilogy. It's good for Christians to have imaginations.

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It's good even to play pretend with our children, whether it's knights fighting dragons or our children pretending they're

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Spider -Man and things like that. Pretending and imagination, not only are these okay, these are good things for Christians to think about and for Christians to practice.

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Now, what about when it comes to Santa Claus? The problem with Santa Claus, there's a few problems.

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One of the problems with Santa Claus is that it almost always involves a parent lying to their children.

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Now, if you're able to pretend and imagine and play the game of Santa Claus and your children know it's a game and you're just playing pretend and you don't have to lie, that's great.

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That's wonderful. But oftentimes, when we do the pretending,

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I guess, of Santa Claus, we end up lying to our children. You know, there's two ways to lie.

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Well, there's multiple ways to lie, but there's one way to lie, which is like an overt lie. Is Santa Claus real?

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Yes, he's real. That would be an overt lie. But there's also subtle ways that we lie sometimes that we don't really think about it being lying.

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You know, so our children say, is Santa Claus real? And we're like, what do you think? And we kind of lead them on to believe that Santa Claus is real.

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All the while, like we know he's not real. And so we are participating in breaking the ninth commandment and that we're bearing false witness.

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We're not telling the whole truth, which is an aspect of lying.

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And so that's one problem when it comes to Santa Claus is for some parents, if you want to hold on to playing the game of Santa Claus and playing pretend and imagining, you know, about that.

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Well, one problem is if you're going to do that, you need to tell your children you need to be open and honest.

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This is a game. Santa Claus is not real. It's just a game that kids play.

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Something else to throw in here, too, is when you lie to your children about Santa Claus, it's not just you and them.

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You also bring in other people like you affect my kids and you affect other adults, you know, that we all kind of have to walk on eggshells around the lie.

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And that's just not fair. We teach our children that we have zero tolerance online. And so we've had to deal with stuff in Christmas past.

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We tell them, you don't tell people, you let them handle that with their parents. So we don't tell our children to tell other children.

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But sometimes it just happens, you know, because we teach our children not to lie. And so you need to realize that if you lie to your children about Santa Claus, ultimately you're involving other people in that.

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And so it kind of makes the sin even worse. Another problem, of course, with Santa Claus is the reality that he ends up detracting what it is we're trying to celebrate at Christmas.

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So let me say this. You'd be surprised if you know me at all that I would say this, but we're not commanded to celebrate

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Christmas in the Bible. So nowhere in the Bible does it tell us that we need to set aside December 25th in order to celebrate the

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Incarnation. However, if we're going to celebrate Christmas, it ought to be about the

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Incarnation. Obviously, you can tell in the background, you see my Christmas tree. I like to celebrate Christmas.

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I don't think it's, I really don't think it's a pagan holiday. However, even if you think that it is, originates a pagan holiday, then treat it like we treat the gospel in an unbeliever.

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We've taken it over, right? We've taken it over and now we use it for the glory and exaltation of our

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King. And Christmas is a wonderful time of year to talk about the Incarnation, to talk about the hypostatic union, that Jesus is one divine person in two distinct natures, the 100 %

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God and 100 % man, truly God and truly man. The problem is when we do all this stuff with Santa Claus, like a lot of people can't articulate the hypostatic union, but they can, the eight reindeer of Santa Claus or whatever.

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You understand? Like, like, like there's a, there's a problem with that. There's not a problem with playing pretend.

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There's not a problem with being imaginative, but there is a problem with lying.

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And there is a problem with, with putting something in the way of, that is detracting as it were from the glory and honor and wonder of Christ.

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Ultimately, what I would like to tell parents, and I've taken this from other brothers in years past, but we don't have to have

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Santa Claus to make Christmas magical. There's nothing more supernatural and wonderful than the reality that God became man.

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That's what makes Christmas wonderful. So in, in, in shying away from Santa Claus doesn't mean that there are, that we're trying to make kids have a, have a lousy

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Christmas or whatever, rather we're seeking to point them to the wonder and the glory of Christ. Now there are some

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Christians who take away Santa Claus all the way from anything that they do in Christmas.

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No ornaments with Santa Claus, no, no movies with Santa Claus or whatever. For me, it's a little bit different.

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We enjoy watching a movie with Santa Claus, maybe like we enjoy watching a movie with Spider -Man, but, but we know it's pretend and we know it's play.

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Another thing that we do with Santa Claus in our home is we talk about St. Nicholas and we, we talk about the legend of St.

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Nicholas being, uh, where, where St. Nicholas slaps the heretic Arius in the face for the, uh, at the council of Nicaea.

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And I don't have it in front of me, but anyway, that's how the legend goes. And we, we stick with that and we talk about that. And so we talk about the divinity of Christ, that Jesus truly is

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God and truly is man. Two persons or two, two natures, sorry, two natures in the one divine person.

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So I hope that you think through these things. I hope you don't think that I'm, I'm trying to stifle your children's

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Christmas or anything like that, but I want you to think through these things biblically. I want you to celebrate the season.

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As you think about the wonders of the God man who gave his life, who lived a perfect life for us, who gave his life on Calvary for our sins, who died and who rose again and who calls upon the world to repent of their sins and believe the gospel.

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This is the ultimate focus of our Christmas celebration. If you can do Santa Claus and play pretend and not lie and, and, and tell your children it's pretend and you're just having fun and it doesn't detract from Christmas, well, that's one thing.

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Oftentimes though, it does end up, it does end up becoming a problem because of, of one or two of those things or, or both of those things together.

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Anyway, I hope this is helpful. I'm happy to answer questions about it. May God bless you as you celebrate the incarnation this time of year.