More on Traditions

So, why traditions, and why the specific ones that we do? I have to ask why, because I know my children will one day ask why, and I want to have an answer for them. I don't want to do things just to do them, I want to do things for a purpose, ie. to help my children know and understand God, and to grow to love and trust Him. Noel Piper, in her book Treasuring God in our Traditions, points out that Moses assumes that children will question "why":

"And when your children say to you, "What do you mean by this service? you shall say, 'It is the sacrifice of the LORD's Passover, for he passed over the houses of the people of Israel in Egypt.'" (Exodus 12:26-27)

I hope that in our home the answer will be: God. He saved us, and we want to honor, worship, and thank Him. This year, we want to implement a new tradition in our home. We will choose a "Forgotten Angel" , a child that will not otherwise have any Christmas gifts. In the future, I hope that our children will willingly take some of their own money and buy gifts for another child as a way of honoring Jesus. It is His birthday after all.

Also, we have chosen not to include Santa Claus presents on Christmas morning. Micah and Owen will have plenty of fun opening toys, they will just know that the gifts came from Mama and Dada, not a fictional character. Matt and I have discussed this off and on for the past month or so and here are some of our thoughts:

Our children are young, and we want them to grasp whatever truth about Christmas that they are able. We fear that clouding their minds with a character, who may seem on the surface like God, would be confusing. After all, the myth is that Santa is all seeing, gives good gifts, desires good behavior, and can be everywhere in the same night. But really, Santa isn't much like God at all. The Lord gave us the best gift, Jesus, not because we were good enough, but to make us good. We don't want to preach an anti-gospel at Christmas time.

Also, the myth of Santa is hard to believe. As a parent, you must always watch what you say as not to "slip up" and you must continually lie to your children if you truly want them to believe that a jolly man comes down the chimney and leaves anything the child desires from his never ending toy sack. Isn't the truth of Jesus' birth also hard to believe? God humbled himself to be born a baby to a virgin? Jesus was fully God and fully man at the same time. He was the Lord of lords, King of kings, and yet was born in the most lowly of places. I would never want my children, upon learning the truth of Santa, to also wonder if we were just making all that Jesus as a baby stuff up too. Maybe that is a stretch, I don't know. I do know that it is far too important to risk. I know now, when they are young, is when we will have the most influence on them, and we hope to gain their trust so that they will continue to heed what we say.

We want fantasy to be just that, fantasy. Fantasy is fun. We just don't want to blur the lines of truth and fiction. Of course their is absolutely nothing wrong with the fairytale of Santa Claus. In fact, the narrative of Santa Claus is steeped in reality, which you can find out more about here; albeit the story of St. Nicholas has become convoluted with modern day sentiments. I have no problem letting our children have fun hearing stories of elves, reindeer, and the North Pole, I am just not going to ask them to believe that it is all true.

All families/parents must choose which traditions they want to start or continue. It is important to be thoughtful about our traditions because they are not meaningless, in fact they are telling our children and others what we value. I would love to hear about any traditions you are excited about this holiday season.