Christmas Picture

The Truth About Santa

We don't do Santa at our house. Kylee and Makenna were told from the beginning that Santa is just pretend. Likewise, Landen at the age of two is well aware of the fact that Santa is not real. I heard Kristi mention that to him a few weeks ago and following in the thinking of their parents, Kylee and Makenna have driven the point home on the matter.


So, why no Santa?

I see it as dishonest.
Truthfulness with our children is our policy. We (Kristi and I) try to be truthful in all circumstances. We make it a point not to make up a lie to wiggle out of a situation with our kids. If there is something we cannot discuss with them, we simply tell them that it is Mommy and Daddy's business and not for them to know about. Persuading our children to believe something that is not true is simply wrong in my opinion.

I'm selfish.
Why would we want to spend our hard earned money on presents for our kids only for them to think that Santa brought the stuff?

I don't want to skew my kids understanding of the world.
When I was four years old, I had traveled quite a lot and, I think, had a decent understanding of the world in which we live. I doubted that it was possible for this Santa story to be true. As my mom tucked me into bed on Christmas Eve in 1975 I asked my mom, "Is Santa real?" Her answer, "No." I have always appreciated the simple, honest answer she gave me; an answer that matched my understanding of the world in which I was living. Children who believe in Santa have a skewed picture of reality and do not have a solid foundation on which to build future knowledge about our world.

I think it is pointless.
I don't see how the Santa story adds anything to the meaning of Christmas. On the contrary, I think it takes away from the celebration of the birth of Jesus. When Kylee and Makenna were four years old we offered to pretend with them that Santa would put presents under the tree that year. They weren't interested. They didn't know why we would want to pretend that. I don't know why parents want to pretend that.

I want my kids to believe.
I see parallels between the story of Santa and the story of Jesus. Both are physically unseen. Both are gift givers. Santa though is make-believe. Jesus is the Christ, the Son of the Living God. We want there to be no confusion between the mythic story of Santa and Jesus Christ, the Truth. Are children who have been told that both Santa and Jesus are real, more likely to doubt Christ when they find out that the story of Santa isn't true? I think maybe, which is reason enough for me to be honest from the start.

I asked Kylee and Makenna tonight if they wish that we would have told them that Santa was real from the start. They both replied with a resounding NO. They appreciate our commitment to truthfulness and I think they are especially glad to have missed the confusion and suspicion that go along with believing in Santa.

A Green Christmas

Christmas is going to be a little greener at our house this year.

When we moved here in 2000 we had a small artificial Christmas tree. Shortly thereafter my mom downsized trees and gave us her old tree which was quite large. So large in fact that we had a hard time getting it to stay straight in its plastic stand. We had to tie it to the ceiling to keep it upright. Four years ago, shortly after we had finished decorating it, the stand broke and the tree crashed to the floor. The way we remember it, the tree actually landed on one of us. I don't know if that's true or not, I think it is though. The way the tree was designed, there was no way to get it to work without the original stand, which was useless at that point.

We bought a new tree that year (2004.) We wanted a big tree again, but this time we opted for a pre-lit model, "so we would never have to worry about the lights again." We had a beautiful tree that Christmas. 1,500 lights! It was a marvel. The thing caught your eye from the Hartman Street bridge over Berlin Court Ditch for Pete's sake!

After wrestling this monster out of our attic in 2005 we discovered that a whole section of branches failed to light. Kristi called the company's Christmas tree hot-line and since it was under warranty they mailed us a new section for free.

The warranty had expired as Christmas 2006 rolled around and so did another section of lights.

Last year the entire second row of branches went dark. The tree was really a little too big anyway. (The bottom row spanned halfway across our living room.) So, we decided to remove the bottom row of branches, hack the pole off and remove the lights from the new bottom row and put our own lights on.

Removing lights from a pre-lit tree is NOT an easy task. Using wire cutters, it took Kristi and I about two hours to get the lights off of this one row of branches.

As Christmas drew closer that year, our tree grew darker. Sections of the pre-lit lights continued to go out.

I'm not sure what we were thinking at the end of 2007. Maybe we were just hoping that a summer spent in a hot attic would cure our sick tree. However, when we set the tree up Friday night, even more sections of lights were not working.

We decided it was time for a new tree. Kristi called her mom and dad and we all headed out to find a new tree. It would be smaller, with energy efficient LED lights. As we looked, we realized that we really liked the looks of the tree we already had. .. if it would just be a little smaller and have working lights. So, we decided not to buy a new tree at all, but instead to take off another section from the bottom of our tree (to shrink it further,) hack off the pole some more, remove ALL of the pre-lit lights, and buy LED lights to put on the tree. We even had two sets of extra hands along to help us remove the existing lights.

How long does it take four adults and two seven year-olds to remove the lights from a 7 1/2 foot tree? Four HOURS! (Keep in mind, we didn't even remove the lights from the two biggest rows of branches.)

After we had worked on removing lights for a couple of hours, I joked to Kristi's parents that this was our plan for the evening all along - we had no intention of buying a new tree in the first place. Ha! Not really! But as you can probably imagine at this point in the story, we were incredibly thankful to have their help.

In the end, we have the same tree. It's shorter. It's just right for our living room. We will be able to leave it all put together to store it. It is energy efficient, it will only cost us about $2 in electricity to light it this year (as opposed to about $20 before.) It works! And we will never have to worry about Christmas lights again. . . maybe I shouldn't have typed that.