Christmas to Celebrate or Not

We, the Christian podcast community of podcasters, gather to discuss our theological differences with love and charity. This is a ministry of striving for eternity.

Christmas as a Christian Liberty Issue

Welcome to another Theology Throwdown. I am your host, Andrew Rappaport, the Executive Director of the Christian Podcast Community, of which this is a proud member. And this podcast is actually a podcast of all the podcasters at Christian Podcast Community, of which, well, we have at least six represented here today.

So as we usually do, we're going to give a round table. Before we do, I will tell you the topic. Today's topic is Christmas. Well, it is December. Isn't that what everyone else is talking about? Well, actually, no, not everyone does.

Some Christians think we shouldn't celebrate Christmas. That'll be one of the topics tonight. And so let's start with our round table. We'll start with Pastor Dominic. If you don't mind introducing yourself, your show, and how people can find you.

Why would they want to? Wait.

Yeah, that's the question. That's the question I want to ask, too, why would people want to? Pastor Dominic Romaldi, I do a show from the Christian Podcast Community called Street Talk Theology, where we take theology and bring it to the streets.

I also pastor here at Desert Sky Baptist Church here in Casa Grande, and it's always an honor to be on with my fellow podcasters. Aaron, how about you?

My name is Aaron Brewster. Sometimes people know me as AM Brewster, and I am the president of Evermind Ministries. I have, well, there are a number of ministries that are part of Evermind. Two of them happen to be Truth Love Parent, which is also a podcast that I have on this network.

And we're taking a little hiatus from that one right now. But the other one is the Celebration of God, which we have a lot to say about Christmas and various other holidays from a biblical perspective.

So I'm really looking forward to this conversation here today. You can go to truthloveparent .com or ambrewster .com or celebrationofgod .com to learn more about any of those.

So what you're basically saying is either whatever we say here is going to be corrected on the Celebration of God the rest of the month, or we're providing you show prep. One or the other, right?

Yeah, basically, I will have more to say. Actually, we look at this section of time, starting in December, as the Season of Grace. And we're actually doing a couple series right now about the grace of God.

I'm not really talking too much about Christmas. I have talked a lot about in the past, and those episodes are available, but not going to talk about Christmas a lot right now. So this is my one opportunity to do it.

Okay, next up is Eve.

Hey, good evening. I'm Eve Franklin, and I'm co-host of the podcast, Are You Just Watching? And I also have a workbook called Are You Just Watching? In which we discuss secular entertainment, how to watch secular entertainment with a Christian worldview.

And we sometimes publish podcasts that get Andrew into trouble.

So yeah, I was going to I was going to comment that something about that, the fact that, you know, I really, you know, I listened to your show without watching too many of the movies, but I got myself in trouble just tweeting things out about things I think as I listened to your podcast.

And well, I didn't word things the best. We'll just leave it at that. If you want more details, you could go to my Apologetics Live podcast and hear it all. Melissa.

Sure. So I'm Melissa Lacks, and my podcast is Thoroughly Equipped. And we just basically go through women's ministry teachings. We look at the speakers that are very popular in that sphere, and we compare them to Scripture.

And recently, or this month, we'll be going through Christian mysticism and looking at how the IF ministry from Jani Allen brings in Christian mystics. And so we're going to dive into that very deeply.

That will be good. I'm going to look forward to that.

Last up is Brett. My name is Brett Collier, and I host the Christian Rebel Podcast. Basically on the Christian Rebel Podcast, we follow the teachings of Romans 12 .2, which says do not conform to the pattern of this world.

Essentially, by not conforming to this world, we are rebelling against the world and conform with the Christ. So be a rebel and follow Jesus. You can find us at ChristianRebelPodcast .com and also on the ChristianPodcastCommunity .org.

And I am your host here, Andrew Rappaport. I host some other podcasts. One is, I already mentioned, Apologetics Live, where the most recent one I had to explain a comment I made about superheroes based off of E's review of Black Adam.

So I'm just, for the record, I think with the group we have here, I think Brett is Batman and Aaron is Superman. I don't know. They just that's the characters they look like to me. But anyway. Yes. But I've been told that that's probably not good, because I guess one of you is DC, one's Marvel and you guys aren't supposed to get along.

So OK.

You just totally messed that up, man. We're both DC. Come on, bro. Oh, well, there we go.

You call them Spider-Man, then we didn't have an issue.

And Captain America is is Marvel. So the other two are DC.

Yeah. My pop culture intellect is so high or nonexistent. My other podcast is Andrew Rappaport's Rap Report, which if you're listening to this show, I'll give you a little hint. There's a voice here, one of the six voices that you're going to hear on my rap report next week as we talk about the topic of regeneration.

Which voice is it? Well, the people know which ones they're not. And the one person knows who he is. But you're going to have to listen to that to find out. So that's how you try and tease people in. But it won't work.

So today we're going to talk about Christmas. Now, I'm going to say for the record, before I ask the first question, I did not grow up with Christmas, celebrating Christmas. And so I remember when I first became a Christian and everybody that I went to church with when I started going to church told me that I needed a Christmas tree.

And I had one response to everybody. You give me a good reason why I need a Christmas tree other than the fact that you grew up with one and I'll get one. Needless to say, I never bought a Christmas tree.

My wife eventually did. But so I want to say this up front that I think that we have some views of Christmas that I've seen in Christianity get emotional. And I think some of it is based in nostalgia.

Some of it is just based in the fact that this is the way we grew up. I believe you all need a menorah and for eight days you sing in Hebrew and light candles. That's nostalgic to me. So one of the first questions I want to ask each of us is the question of should Christians celebrate Christmas?

And I don't know each of the views here. So maybe one of you guys is going to guys and girls, I should say, one of you will have a view that we shouldn't. And therefore, the rest of the questions may end up, you know, just ending right there with you.

But so let me let me I'll start in order that we have here right now, just start with with Pastor Dom. Should Christians celebrate Christmas? And I guess then that might answer whether you do. But I'll ask that because maybe you think Christians should, but you don't.

Should Christians celebrate Christmas and do you?

Yeah, I think the Bible is clear that there's freedom in Christ. I mean, should they celebrate Christmas, that would be their choice. We sell we're Italian.

We celebrate everything. But normally, but, you know, you celebrate everything because you're Italian, which means there's food. That means we like to eat. We like to eat.

That's what I mean. No, I think I think there is freedom in Christ. I mean, if you're celebrating it, I my thing is that what I try to do in my celebration of Christmas, even when I preach in the church, if I'm doing Christmas sermons, I always implement the resurrection of Christ.

I don't keep Christ in the cradle. So in any of my sermons that I preach during Christmas, I let them know that we serve a resurrected Christ. I think the world and its ideologies want to keep Christ in the cradle.

So I don't see a problem if people celebrate it or not celebrate it.

So that's my view. Aaron, how about you? You have a whole podcast about the celebration of God focused on holidays and festivals.

So yeah, well, Pastor Dom said is correct. There is liberty for believers to celebrate a certain holiday or to not celebrate a certain holiday. But here's my perspective on this. I believe every born again believer in one way or another or at one time or another is going to celebrate, I'll put it this way in air quotes, Christmas, meaning the main focus that most Christians have, why should, let me rephrase that.

The main focus that most Bible believing, God honoring, God focused Christians try to have during Christmas time is something that you can't avoid as a Christian. I mean, generally speaking, this is a whole kind of a whole nother topic, but to deny the virgin birth, you can't be a Christian.

You can't truly be born again to deny the virgin birth. You're going to read through the scriptures and you're going to encounter the fact that Christ came to this earth. The incarnation was obviously very important to all of our salvation.

So to meet a Christian who in one way or another doesn't celebrate the main themes, the main biblical themes of Christmas, I don't think they exist. Whether or not they do that on December 25th might be an interesting question.

But I think that we all do. And I think even that the Christians, maybe even the Christians here today who would say, no, I don't celebrate it on the 25th. We don't get a tree. We don't do that kind of stuff.

I still believe in some way or another, they do reflect on and they do celebrate God for the incarnation. All right, Eve, how about you?

Well, I don't see any harm in having a day set aside that you spend with family and especially if that is centered around a remembrance of Christ coming to earth in his incarnated form. I don't see a harm in it.

I also don't see a harm in not celebrating it as a holiday. I think I've always seen Christmas as being a time to reconnect with your family and especially have a chance to maybe even witness to unsaved family because it's the chance where your Christian walk can actually intersect with a secular holiday that everybody observes.

And so that gives you that opportunity to, hey, do you know what Christmas is really about and why it became a holiday in the world? And it's not just a U .S. holiday. It's a global holiday. And this is why.

And and then on top of that, I would say that Christian parents who then use Christmas as an opportunity to preserve myths of Santa Claus and elves and and all of that stuff are probably harming their children because and we can get that into that further.

Oh, yes, we will.

Melissa, how about you? Yeah, so when you pose that question, I'm thinking of should we celebrate Christmas? Should again, we have the liberty to treat each day. Well, that's the way I try to think of it, try to treat each day equally.

So I'm always trying to celebrate Christ in some way. But then I go to what's the definition of Christmas? What do people when when they say Christmas, what is included in that? So I agree with all that was completely said, and especially I like that A .M. Brewster mentioned about how we do all at one point talk about and celebrate, come to worship or think about the the virgin birth.

Right. But yeah, Christmas in regards to some of the traditions I we ourselves don't. So we celebrate what we call Christmas. And we do look at the reading of Christ coming into the world. And we do focus on that.

And then we do have family gathering. We open gifts and but the Santa Claus and the other stuff. Yeah, we don't do that.

OK, we're going to get into that more in a bit. Brett, how about you?

I totally agree with what everyone said that we have liberty in Christ to celebrate Christmas. I celebrate Christmas, even though I'm a bit of a scrooge sometimes because I've been in retail for 15 years and listening to Christmas music for 15 years has kind of killed me of Christmas.

So I say bah humbug to all of it, except about Christ, keeping Christ first. And because the world has commercialized it, it's all about gift giving. And when I grew up, my dad would read us the Bible story of Jesus being born.

And then he would go into Jesus dying on the cross and resurrection. He would preach a sermon before we had a chance to open up one gift growing up, which was kind of cool. And I did that with my kids until one of them is out of the house now in college, and I still have one at home.

But we read the Christmas story before we open our presents and we keep Christ first.

That's good. So let me ask this, and I'm just going to put it out for anyone to unmute. Have you guys run into anyone that believes we should not as Christians celebrate Christmas? I actually know people that will be very adamant this time of year.

They start posting things that Christians shouldn't do this. They'll talk about how pagan it is. I think we've all agreed it's we kind of see it as a Christian liberty, not saying you're not saved by doing it or not saved by not doing it either way.

But have you guys run into people that have these strong views against Christmas? I have run into a couple.

Go ahead, Melissa. Tag, you're it. Okay. Yes, because I have some Jehovah's Witness friends. That's all.

Okay. So then before Aaron goes, explain that because maybe not everyone knows the Jehovah's Witnesses views. Because you're saying it and expecting us all to know. And some of us do know. Yes.

They don't celebrate holidays. From the friends that I know, and it is still a little amount, they don't celebrate birthdays either because they say it's like it worships humans or man-made tradition instead of their beliefs.

Aaron. Though I've encountered some Jewish Christians, Messianic Jews who prefer to take a more Jewish approach to this time of year. So I've encountered some people like that. But most of the people I interact with are the kind of like the hard line types who would kind of put Christmas and Halloween on the same level.

It's pagan, it's wicked, you're encouraging, you're celebrating these things that Christians shouldn't be celebrating.

That's most of what I've encountered. There is an element that we historically have to recognize that this was originally a pagan holiday, December 25th, that was Christianized by the Roman Catholic Church.

And they gave it, you know, I don't want to be a spoiler alert for anyone. Jesus wasn't born in December 25th. So, which actually on a side note becomes really funny if you guys are ever out and people tell you that the stories of Jesus are similar to Mithra and all these other Egyptian deities.

Well, it's kind of interesting. The two things that they always have in all the ones that they try to put that with when they try to find these ancient Egyptian myths, myth gods that they say, well, see, it's just Jesus is just another myth.

The two things they always have in common is they always say that those Egyptian myth gods were born on December 25th. And the second thing is they are all called the Son of God. Now, it's very interesting with those two, because one, Jesus wasn't born December 25th.

Second thing is we actually would think he is born probably more in April timeframe. But the other thing is when they say that he's the Son of God, they're usually saying S-U-N, which is the Egyptian god Ra, which only works for son and son in English, not in Egyptian.

But that's a side note. But, Aaron, you're raising your hand.

Well, I am because, you know, in this day and age of misinformation, right, you know, trying to not about actually put some. I try to put something on Twitter recently is like the people who are so worried about like putting duct tape over someone's mouth and controlling what comes out of everyone's mouths are generally not the people who can be trusted to be speaking the truth.

I will say this, though, like we've come to as a culture, as a Christian subculture, we've come to accept a lot of things as being true. For example, if I heard you correctly, Andrew, you just said that, you know, the Roman Catholic Church kind of usurped this December 25th holiday that was going on with the pagan things.

They kind of made that their own and injected the celebration of Christ into that. Well, we've heard that a lot. But the interesting thing is, and I wish I were this person, actually, as part of my podcast, I hope to do more and more history and research on this.

But there are some very scholarly, I'm not sure, you know, G3, you know about G3, right? Scott Anuel from G3 has written quite extensively on this, and he basically flat out says that that's not even true, that the Roman Catholics did not usurp the 25th from the pagans and replace it with their own thing.

So what I would do is, first of all, I'm going to be looking for those references. I'm looking for them right now. I'd love to share them with you. But I think it's really important for us Christians to be discerning.

I'm not saying, Andrew, that you're not discerning, because I believe the same thing for the longest time. But we need to just be looking, we need to be studying, we need to be asking the hard questions, we need to be just to take everything at face value, because we may find that that thing that we believed for a long time, that Christmas trees were pagan and candy canes were pagan and all that kind of stuff, actually isn't historically accurate.

And with that said, I'm going to look for some information to prove that point.

Yeah, no, you're right. I mean, the reality is, what's our natural starting point is we typically go with what we've heard a lot until we research something in detail. And truthfully, we don't have the time to research everything.

This is what drives my wife nuts with me is because I do original resource. And so when I go and when I study something out, I always go back to the original source of something. If one person quotes someone, I don't stop that.

I actually keep going back to it. So I try to figure out the original source, which is time consuming. But like you said, I have found countless times where things that people say over and over again, we find out actually aren't right, aren't true.

So let me ask this, because I do know that there's some people that think Christians shouldn't worship or celebrate Christmas. But I want to ask this because I know Pastor Dom is going to need to go shortly.

And I want to ask this before he goes, because he's a pastor here. And so this year, this happens every, what, seven years, Christmas will be on Sunday. And so a big thing that we're going to start hearing, I've already started to see it, is should a church cancel services when Christmas is on a Sunday?

So I'm going to start with Dom. You cut out for a minute, Andrew. Did you guys all hear what he said? No. Well, my internet was fine on my end. So I'll ask the question again. So should churches cancel Sunday service when Christmas is on a Sunday?

So for the sake of, hey, this is a family, so families could get together. That's the way that many of these churches do it. But Dom, are you going to cancel church services this year on Christmas? No way.

You know, in fact, I didn't even know that happened, Andrew, until I seen something in the paper, one of the churches that I just know. So we're going to have a Christmas Eve clock, and then we're going to have regular Sunday service on Sunday.

That's the Lord's day, whether it's Christmas.

I think my, okay, I lost internet there for a second, but I got the gist of what you said there, Pastor Dom.

Yeah, yeah, we're going to have it. We're going to have it. You know, we're going to have Christmas Eve service and Christmas day.

Anyone, and so just raise a hand if anyone has, anyone want to add to that, anyone go to a church where they're planning or in the past had canceled services due to Christmas being on a Sunday or have any opinions of that?

My dad never canceled church for no reason at all, whether it was Christmas, Super Bowl Sunday or whatever, he had church open. Background, my dad was a pastor, by the way, if anyone, if any of you didn't know that.

So my dad would have Christmas, and sometimes you'd have a special Sunday, because it was Christmas, you'd have Christmas hymns being sung or some type of special Christmas type of, like, I guess, a Christmas cantata, they used to be called back in the day, where they had, like, a play and a musical of the birth and the birth of Christ and all that.

So my dad never closed church, and I've never been to a church that actually did.

So I've moved 20 some times. I've been to a lot of churches, and I've attended churches where they did close it down on Christmas Day and others where they did not. I would have to say if I were pastoring a church and Christmas landed on Christmas Day, I definitively would not cancel services.

Yeah, I personally would have a hard time with a church that cancels the worship of a service toward the worship of God. Yeah, especially for, as Brett said, a Super Bowl Sunday. You know, I did go to a church where we didn't have evening service on Super Bowl Sunday, because they actually would schedule the business meeting, the once-a-year business meeting, and that was their way of, you know, I fully admit that I think that was their way of getting out of, like, saying, well, we had the business meeting, so we have a service and a lunch and a business meeting, and then we don't have evening service.

I think it just happened to coordinate with Super Bowl Sunday every year. But even, I think that for me, if I'm going to bring, if I want to raise my children, I want to have a family to say, we are going to worship God on Sunday, and to say, well, we're not going to worship God this Sunday because it's Christmas, so we're going to stay home with family.

What, I guess in my mind, I'm thinking, what am I teaching my children? That the worship of God is for our convenience, or that our family is more important than worship of God? Because I can think of a verse where Jesus said He came to divide family, even.

In other words, He came that we should put God first above family. And so, I think that canceling church service for family gathering, I think, reverses what the teachings of Jesus would be on the priorities.

I do think it is fair to say, and I would have added this caveat to my statement before, that if we had multiple services on a Sunday, that's not necessarily clearly identified in Scripture. God's people meeting to corporately worship the Lord on a Sunday is clear and obvious, so that is important.

But to say that I wouldn't cancel an evening service, or something like that, or cancel a morning service and have an evening service, I probably would give some careful thought to that, just because sometimes we like to say that our modern, and this is good for this conversation, we like to claim that our modern church traditions are absolutely necessary because we do them.

But, you know, though I wouldn't cancel all corporate worship on a Sunday, if we had more than one service, I could perchance consider canceling one of them.

Yeah. Hey, Aaron, may I, Andrew, for a second? Yeah, I wanted to, Aaron, I don't know if you can see, well, here it is.

Well, what you're showing won't work well on, so why don't you read the title of the book you're reading?

No, I'm just saying, Aaron, try to look at this book in your research. It's called Christmas, the Sacred to Santa by Tara Moore. This will help you in some of your research on some of the stuff that you were talking about.

So I appreciate that. What was the author's name? Tara Moore. It says The Sacred to Santa.

And how do you spell that, the author?

T-A-R-A-M-O-O-R-E. Cool.

Thank you so much. And if it was too fast for you, Aaron, you could go back and re-listen to this.

I'll have to repeat it a couple of times.

That way you get to know what I edit out from what you say. All right. I think one of the things that we end up getting into, though, is when we talk about Christmas, and mentioning as far as Sunday, having it this year, but we say, OK, I think we all agreed it's a Christian liberty issue.

But then we've already started to bring up the topic, the two ladies already hit on it a little bit, on how should we as individuals and churches celebrate Christmas. So I'm going to start this off with Eve and then Melissa, because you guys already kind of started some of this.

And so, Eve, are there things that you think we can do as part of our celebration of Christmas? Are there things you think we shouldn't do?

Avoiding Santa Claus and Secular Myths

Well, my position on the whole Santa Claus thing is that it is a secular part of Christmas that Christians should probably avoid. I remember going to big family gatherings where a great aunt would have presents under the tree that were from Santa, and the whole tradition of having the stockings that are filled overnight and the house decorated and the presents all put under the tree during the night so that the kids wake up Christmas morning after Santa had somehow come down a house with no chimney and eaten the milk and cookies that were, I mean, all of these like secular traditions that we think make Christmas fun for children.

And personally, I've always felt like it's lying to kids. And in the fact that Santa is not real, and yet we present him as a almost godlike being who does these, you know, knows whether you're doing wrong or right and rewards you and all this kind of stuff, can actually communicate falsehoods about who God is and who Jesus is.

And it sets children up for failure in their Christian walk when they're lied to by their parents about Santa, and then they grow up and find out that they were lied to and then they're like, well, you lied to me about Santa, you're probably lying to me about Jesus too.

And I think that that just sets children up for failure in the Christian walk. And I feel like Christian parents should not be setting up their children for failure in believing something that isn't true.

And my parents never, ever did any of those traditions growing up. I never believed Santa was real. And I kind of laughed when we went to family gatherings where there were people in the family who thought that Santa was real.

And then to go beyond that and have the whole secular media and the whole world, you know, they see Santa Claus in the mall and they get to sit in his lap and then they track his sleigh on Christmas Eve, you know, going around the world and all this kind of stuff that kids are exposed to.

And it's the whole world is lying to them. So that seriously bothers me. But I don't see any problem with Christians having, you know, a Christmas tree in their house and, you know, giving presents to each other.

My family has long since quit doing this whole Christmas is all about what I get for Christmas. We draw names and each person gets one gift and the rest of the money that we want to give to charity or spend our time with, you know, doing something for people in need or whatever.

And I think that that is a good emphasis to put on the idea of gift giving, that it's not about what we get. It's about what we give. It says in Acts, you know, that it is more blessed to give than to receive.

And I think that's a good time of year to demonstrate that to your children, the joy of giving, not necessarily the the greediness of getting. And I'll stop so other people can talk.

Yeah. And I'll just say with what you said, I mean, growing up Jewish, I never was taught about Santa Claus. And I guess for me, I decided I was never going to tell my kids about Santa Claus because I remember it was either kindergarten or first grade.

And I had this this girl that I went to school with and she was so excited Santa Claus was going to come and give her presents. And I don't know, maybe in my innocence or in my troublemaker ness, whatever that term would be, whichever one you want to pose it as.

But I just remember saying to her, you know, there's no such thing as Santa Claus. And she's like, oh, no, there is. He eats the cookies that I leave for him and drinks the milk and leaves me presents.

And I just remember saying to her, your parents are lying to you. They're the ones doing that. And she went home that night and came back the next day, bawling her eyes out because she told her parents what I said.

And they figured, well, she's old enough now for them to tell the truth. And just, you know, she was crushed that her parents had been lying to her about that. And I just I still remember that reaction said, I'm never doing that to my kids.

You know, so so there is an aspect, like I think you said, where it's nostalgic. People grow up having these stories and they they enjoy telling their kids the stories because they want their kids to have that same nostalgic feeling that they had.

And I think a lot of that does play into it. Aaron raised his hand. So is it your you want to respond, son, I said?

Well, no, I think I think it's fair to acknowledge that there is a third option here. I normally when this is discussed, it's embrace Santa or not. But the reality is we were earlier talking about superheroes.

For a person to say, I refuse to tell my kids anything about Santa Claus. We don't watch the movies. We don't we don't read the books. And those same people sit down and watch Batman movies. It's kind of like, well, I'm pretty sure you can enjoy the fiction, the story, the the imagination without telling you don't tell your kids that Batman really exists.

Right. And I think that's that's the approach we took with our kids. So, you know, we just there's a new Santa Claus TV show being put out by Disney as a sequel, sorry, as a sequel to the Santa Claus movies, the C .L .A .U .S .E. Santa Claus movies and those ones with Tim Allen.

And we always enjoyed that. Now, my kids have never believed that Santa Claus was real, but we really enjoy just the fanciful stories. So I think that that is a third option that rarely gets represented.

And I think it's fair to put it out there.

And you'll notice I said that it's having your children believe that Santa is real. And I agree with that 100 percent. Yeah, I don't have a yeah, I don't necessarily have a problem that, you know, Santa Claus exists.

He's based on a real care, a real person who did some good. I don't believe in canonizing saints like the Catholic Church does. But I think there's some value in teaching about the historical person that Santa Claus is based on and playing with the fiction of it.

I have no problem with fiction, but there are an awful lot of people that let their kids grow up thinking that Santa Claus is real.

And that's what I object to. What blew me away was my sister, who grew up in the same house as me, Jewish, like taught her kids that Santa Claus was real. And like I mean, was freaking out one time when I was saying that Santa Claus isn't real.

It's like quiet, like, you know, and I looked at him like, what, like you teach your kids that Santa Claus is real. I said and I looked, I said, do you teach her the Easter bunnies real too? And she's like, just stop.

I was like, wow, like, come on. So, Melissa.

Yeah, basically everything Eve said and even what Mr. Brewster said, that's basically what we do. I do kind of understand because I grew up with parents who played the Santa Claus card, but they were always, it was this, yeah, it was just imaginary.

They were always very clear that it was imaginary. And like, we might have a gift or two, like the really, you know, special gifts that we give to the kids. They might say Santa on them, but my kids from the very beginning knew that Santa didn't exist.

And yeah, we had to deal with the whole them possibly telling somebody else. But I get the reason why parents do it. Part of me thinks it's not so much tradition. I mean, I think that's a part of it, but it's that you just, you see the kids getting all excited about this.

Yeah, godlike being and you play a part in sharing that spirit of Christmas. And part of them being excited about counting down the days and this man who's going to come down the chimney and things like that.

So I can understand the wanting to incite that excitement with the kids because I'm sure when they were younger, they felt that excitement when they were kids. And so they're reminiscing about the way that felt and they want to have that for their kids.

But that's where I think the problem is because one, I'm bearing false witness is basically what I'm doing. Like Eve said, you're lying. But there's even more like, I'm not just lying. I'm bearing a false witness about something that doesn't exist.