Santa God

In the recent holidays, my wife and I were confronted with one of our first challenges in the religious upbringing of our kids:

On the other hand, Santa is fun, and not all that different from other fictional stories that children engage and enjoy. The key element, it seems, is to make sure that children come to an understanding that Santa is a story, and to be enjoyed as such. My five-year-old has no trouble talking about dragons, and getting into detailed discussions about the habits of dragons. Eventually, he asked me: "Are dragons real?" "No, they're just in stories." "Oh . . . So, tell me more about Smaug."

One story I thought did an excellent job of gently communicating this position comes from a very old Richard Scarry book of Christmas stories. It tells of barnyard where a bunch of little chicks are getting excited at the prospect of Santa coming to visit on Christmas. Now, the grown-up animals know that Santa doesn't visit barnyards, and there are some who want to tell the chicks that they shouldn't get their hopes up. Others decide that it would be fun for the chicks and everyone else if one of them dress up like Santa and bring them presents. All the animals go to great lengths to find presents for the chicks and to assemble all the props for a good Santa appearance, and it obviously brings everyone together, and even leads to the pretend Santa (a goat) bringing presents for the other adults.

What I like about it is that it never explicitly debunks Santa. It doesn't say that he's not real. But it shows the child all the reasons why parents would pretend Santa is real, and all the good things that come out of the game. So, if the child should find out that Santa wasn't real, he wouldn't immediately perceive it as a nefarious plot.