Family – Page 10 – kimberly smith

In Kids Ministry and more incidental interactions with children at this time of year, I’m always interested to see how children of various ages process the conundrum of Jesus “versus” Santa! Every church going child knows that Christmas is about the birth of Jesus and yet, often, the presents that miraculously appear under the tree on Christmas morning have come from Santa (we know this because the cookies were eaten and his reindeer left half-eaten carrots on the driveway!). Obviously our community celebrates a Santa-driven Christmas season and yet we sing songs like “Away in a Manger” and have donkeys and camels in the nativity pictures. How can we reconcile the two?

Teaching Grade 2 (at a Christian school) there were always a few children who would loudly proclaim to all that Santa wasn’t real and even a couple that would go so far as to say he was ‘of the Devil’. There were then many conversations to be had with distraught children (or less-than-impressed parents) whose Christmas paradigm had been shattered.

My response was always to gently remind the children that all families have different ways of celebrating special occasions and, at Christmas, some of them have Santa as part of their tradition. Generally this was enough to quiet the militant few and was innocuous enough to allow the ‘believers’ to continue in whatever their family had raised them to consider as ‘right’.

The breadth of Christian response to “the Santa Question” stretches from here to the North Pole and I would never pronounce judgement on anyone for the choices they make within that … just some thoughts to ponder.

If you decide to include the ‘make believe’ of Santa in your family traditions, be sure to speak clearly to how that matches up with the real story of Christmas. There aren’t two different occasions being celebrated here – just the one; Jesus’ birthday. How do Santa and presents help us celebrate a special day?
The unfortunate flow-on effect of the Santa-based Christmas model is that the focus becomes all about “ME”!! What do I want for Christmas? What will Santa bring ME? If I am good I’ll get everything I want! The REAL story of Christmas is that God made sure we would have EVERYTHING we would ever NEED!! The humble nature of the nativity tells us that serving and giving are more important than getting and “things”. Children need our help to not lose sight of that.
Christmas is a time of awe and wonder for children. Who isn’t captivated by the sight of a small child whose tired face is lit up by a candle as they sing carols with their family or by the glow of Christmas lights tinkling on their tree; Christmas stockings that go from flat and limp to bulging with goodies – all while we’re asleep (whoever delivers them there)?! But I can’t think of anything more awe inspiring or worthy of our wide-eyed wonder than the truth that the God of the Universe would make Himself to be a human child. Born to a place and in a manner that even our pets wouldn’t have to endure. The greatest gift we could ever conceive and an act of the greatest love we will ever know.

What about you? How do you manage the “Jesus/Santa” question in your household and family?

Recently I emailed our youth parents to let them know about our upcoming Youth & Young Adult camp. Our theme this year is “Alive in Us” and we’ll be utilising the resources from Youth Alpha and a visiting speaker to engage the topic of the Holy Spirit. As a team, we are keen to have our youth families on board and have sought to enlist their (and our church family’s) prayer coverage and support as we prepare and head off next weekend.

One of the emails I received back from the parents had this as the opening line: “You have our trust.”My heart leapt!! What an awesome reply! Such an incredibly powerful thing to communicate. “You have our trust.”

Our ministry teams work hard to be worthy of the trust of the parents we serve alongside in the raising and faith development of our young people. They are diligent in their faith and personal life, committed to all aspects of their ministry role and dedicated to developing personal relationships with the children in their care. Do they have your trust?

It’s a question for parents to ask in relation to school teachers, church leaders, sports coaches and music instructors alike; do they have your trust?

Two thoughts flow from that question … the first is to recognise that your children will know if those people have your trust or not and it will communicate very powerfully to them whether or not they should trust them too. How do you speak about your child’s teacher or their coach? Do you demonstrate trust in the way you encourage your child to respond to their instruction? Do you model respect in the way you speak about and handle disagreement?

Secondly, does your child’s leader (teacher/coach/mentor/instructor) KNOW they have your trust? Have you communicated that to them (directly or indirectly)? Or have you, by your absence of affirmation and action, allowed room for their leaders to doubt your support or trust?

Easily fixed … just an email, a call, a ‘thank you’, a handshake. “You have our trust”.

… just a thought.