Just Three Things by Scott Dunn
We are what I would consider your average Christian household when it comes to most aspects of Christmas. We decorate; my wife does a fabulous job of decorating inside; I handle the outside. Her work is featured on the cover and on the inside of the cover in this magazine in this issue! We also buy gifts, we wrap gifts, and we give gifts. Here is the potential hang-up; we allow our kids to believe there is a Santa Claus. That may rub some folks the wrong way, but Santa is a minimal component that is not crucial to what our kids believe Christmas is about. You can ask them; their response will be, “the Birth of Jesus.” Yes, right now, they believe that some white-bearded man will come down the chimney and bring them gifts, but that magic is close to disappearing for our children because of their age. I am not excusing their belief, our allowance of their belief, nor am I relegating our savior to the back seat. This is one of those times in life where you can have your cake and eat it too. Something we should do sparingly and with the sobriety of why we are okay with it.
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I was raised that Christmas was for the birth of Christ. Gifts and Santa are a mutually exclusive thing and are just a way to show we love each other. Commercialization of holidays can certainly pull people away from the actual meaning of Christmas, but I grew up poor, so that was not a huge factor. My kids are in a very different position. We are solidly a middle-class family, and they have access to many things I did not, including the breadth and depth of technology we have today. Right before, and the point of inspiration for this article was my son, Elijah. He is what I’d call a typical boy. Loud, adventurous, and a bull in a China shop who would rather do everything else in life aside from schoolwork. While cooking them lunch, I asked if he had written his Christmas gift wish list. He had, about ten times, but this final list goes into a tiny mailbox on the tree that Santa reads before leaving his gifts. So, he began working on his list, and to give an example; he had an Xbox, an expensive pair of yellow Nikes, 5-$100 Fortnite gift cards… and a laundry list of other things. It’s clear he has no clue about monetary values yet, and that is okay; he is eight.
