Sorry, I just don't like the guy

I grew up loving him. He was good to me. I always expected him to come around eventually, though most of the year I forgot he existed. When his visits came closer I’d get excited and expect a lot of great things from him. But then he’d go away again, like one of those dads that says they love you and brings you lots of cool things, but then it turns out they’ve got other places to be. Everybody loves the guy, but these days I just don’t like the guy. In fact, this year I found myself hating him. Every time I saw him or saw someone else talking him up I’d think, What’s all the hype about? What’s so great about him? I don’t know why anyone wants him around at all.

He’s already gone again. And this time I am glad. I am glad I won’t hear his name for a while again and I don’t want to see his pictures. Even the name Santa spoken excitedly gets under my skin for hours.

For our Christmas date, Jason and I went to a musical in downtown Seattle that featured the Rockettes and was one of those flashy, keep ‘em clappin’, toe tappin’ shows in a huge theatre with a packed out crowd. It was fun and light hearted and silly and for part of the show I was there mentally and just smiled and applauded when I was supposed to and hugged Jason’s arm. But as the show went on and that jolly belly of a man kept showing up for the glamour of each act, I got increasingly agitated with his presence. Not in this show. I get it. It’s a secular Christmas show. Christmas to the secular world = Santa and presents and the like. But for me it was annoying to see him and I literally leaned over and said to Jason, “I’ve never felt this way before but I literally hate Santa.”

I’m not saying this emotional place I’m in is the perfectly righteous one. But it’s interesting that each year that our family tries to make Christmas more about Jesus and more about the deepest, most beautiful meaning not just of this season but of life, the more irritated I get with the fasade that the world has veiled layer after layer over the truth about Christmas. I know that my irritation with Santa is more than whether we are going to wear a costume at Halloween or put Easter eggs out in the garden. It’s more because it’s a person who comes every December 25th and brings gifts and for weeks and weeks prior to this day of celebration we talk about him and sing about him and lift him up and we put our hope in him and tell his story and look forward to him, celebrating advent (his coming). Sound familiar?

Also, it’s not actually even the people who celebrate Santa that irritate me. It’s Santa himself.

I so want Jesus to be famous that it bothers me that Santa has become such a THIEF. I mourn because I love Jesus. I mourn because I wish people could see him, not all the other crap. Jason and I have discussed remembering the age we were when we didn’t “believe” anymore and Christmas was a little more bland and dismal and unsurprising and how disappointing that was. “Doing Santa” was a little light in our year and made childhood magical and fun – we would say. But how sad is a magic, a lie, that you outgrow and pass along to the next generation of children? I don’t blame those who don’t believe in the story about Jesus. I actually don’t even want them to pretend they care about the Bible or the nativity or the story of a baby in Bethlehem. Let their hearts reveal what is true. But as Christians I think we still celebrate Santa sometimes because we want some magic for our kids. But wait…isn’t the fairytale, the magic, the wonder of HIS story…far more amazing? Mind blowing? And TRUE? I don’t have to outgrow it.

Where I am now about Santa is way different than where I have been about him mentally any other time in my life. Each Christmas I’ve weighed him, kept an eye on him and wondered what to do with him. I’ve loved him, I’ve been nonchalant about him, I’ve cast him out of our holidays but still not cared much about who else did. But as I watch the wonder in my children’s eyes as they watched Christmas movies and watched figurines dance in store windows and on tv screens and on mantel places, I got kind of sick this year.

I don’t want them to be confused. I don’t want to take the chance that their hearts can sort out fun grown up pretend from what is the greatest truth of all their lives. Hey kids, this is Santa, and he’s not real but he’s super fun and we’re not going to tell you until you figure it out all by yourself that it’s not real. And look, here’s a nativity right here beside the Santa figurine but hey, this story is real and it’s the most important story you will ever believe with your whole heart so make sure you listen up closely. Confusing to cast both heavy things on their hearts at once? Confusing that they are somehow supposed to sort that out? Confusing even for us adults to sort out explaining to them? Um, yeah. Just in case their hearts can’t sort out a fun, pretend twelve year prank from the greatest story ever told, I’m not even going to try.

My deepest, greatest, most insistent reason I’ve finally jumped ship on Santa is that it has taken me my entire adult life to understand the most important concept I will ever wrap my mind around: GRACE. Grace = an undeserved gift, not earned by merit. Ephesians 2:8-10 says that grace is the gift of God, not from man, so that no man can boast. The “theology” that Santa perpetuates when you boil it down is that we are being watched by him continually and his favor for us is based on our good works verses our bad works and we can expect rewards or consequences based on this (my husband wrote an incredible blog on this, so please read this). That is the saddest, most hopeless theology any of us could believe because our good works on a scale would be utterly weightless. Even our best works are corrupted by selfish intention and prideful thoughts about how great we are for performing them. Transversely, the most hopeful, joy-giving theology we could ever hope for would be GRACE. Comparing to Santa, the story of God’s grace is that we, who have done wrong all the year long, have fallen short of God’s standard perpetually. Yet each day of that year, God has graciously extended his good gift of His Son to us, inviting us to relationship with him if we will only admit we are a wreck without him and give our lives to him. Now THAT is a theology I’d like to celebrate every year. And I am so thankful that my husband and I’s hearts are in the same place with this.

Now that I’ve been bold enough to say I literally hate Santa, I need to say a couple of words wrapped up in one.

One. We still have Santa movies, books with Santa in them and maybe even some ornaments with him on them. We’ve also got Rudolf and Frosty hanging around our book basket and dvd cabinet this time of year. If you say the word Santa around our kids, I’m not going to gasp, cover their ears and walk away hurridly (although the vision strikes me as hilarious and sounds like a fun prank to play on someone, he he!). Just like we don’t scoff at the Easter bunny or Cupid the Valentine and whatever else we do. They are pretend. So is Santa. So if we can downplay Santa to imaginary and pretend, we’re cool. We are going to watch Polar Express and Frosty the Snowman and all that good stuff. But we’re not going to perpetuate FAITH in these characters. I think this is the clearest distinction I can make. And if Santa or Frosty or whoever is becoming too much of who the kids are talking about, we’ll just pull the reigns back a little on it. But praise God, this Christmas the girls were most obsessed with “baby Jesus” which was a sweet gift.

Two. I don’t know how you celebrate or don’t celebrate Christmas. If you celebrate Santa or not, that’s fine. This is not a closed handed issue. I don’t think you are a Christian or not based on what you do with Santa. If you’re a Christian, you’ve got to decide that for you and your family. You should pray, consider, and step back from the flow of culture long enough to decide for you what the Lord is saying to you about how to celebrate Christmas. It has taken us eight years of marriage and twenty years of being Christians to decide. Lots of grace there.

Three. Legalism. The first ten to maybe even fifteen years of my relationship with the Lord I had very legalistic tendencies. Legalism is all about trying to appear godly, while in your heart you are creating rules and regulations and standards with a prideful heart in order to lean on your own “acts of righteousness” instead of leaning on the grace of Jesus. I would tell non-Christians to not cuss. I would expect stores to say Merry Christmas, not Happy Holidays. I would go to church on Sundays and frown on those who didn’t, while forgetting to talk to the Lord all week long. The Lord would reveal truth to me and I would instantly expect everyone in my life to understand the same truths on my timeline. I compared my walk with Christ to others. I felt good about myself when I obeyed God instead of feeling secure in my identity in Christ every moment. I performed. In my heart, I know I still lean this way. I have to let the Holy Spirit check me. And with this Santa issue, a little religious voice in me perks up in me, and I have to let God check my heart again and keep me humble so that what convictions we have developed about how we celebrate Christmas don’t become a set of rules or ways we can look better. Lord let it not be that.

Let it be that we simply love Jesus and we want to lift him up and no one else. And we don’t want there to be any confusion about what we’re about on this holiday or about this story. We want to be implicitly clear: We are awed, amazed and graced with a redemptive story about the God-man, Jesus, who came into this world humbly to save sinners, of whom I am the worst. So with that, we’re going to skip out on what I will call the “prank” of Santa, and stick to the sure thing, which is the greatest story ever told and whose “magic” never ends and never fails. Halleluia.