"But Santa isn't real," I told her in a matter-of-fact voice. "It's your parents. They get the gifts for you and say they're from Santa. How do you think he knows what you want?"
Lindsay didn't believe me...until after Christmas that year.
"Mary Rachel, you were right," she admitted. "I found my new bike in the garage before we had Christmas. Then, when I opened it on Christmas, my parents said that it was from Santa! Can you believe that?!"
Of course I could.
Looking back on that experience now, I feel badly that I shattered Christmas 1993 for Lindsay and her parents. I'm sure that no parents want their kids discovering the truth about Santa from their daughter's friend, the Kindergarten Grinch. And I definitely don't want my girls to be the ones who do the same for someone else.
That said, Santa doesn't stop at our house.
{Before I go any further, I should mention that whatever you do in your house for Christmas is your decision. I don't know what's best for your family; I'm simply writing about what we feel is best for ours. Christmas is a touchy subject, and I am certainly in no position to judge or to make claims about the way that everyone should or shouldn't celebrate it.}
Our three-year-old, Piper, has already heard mixed reviews about Santa at school. We tell her that he's sort of like a superhero, comparing him to Batman or The Hulk, both of which can do some impressive things but only exist in movies or on the pages of books. We also tell her that many of her friends believe other things about Santa, and that's okay.
When people ask my husband why we choose not to do Santa with our kids, he says, "Well, I kind of want credit for those gifts that we get her!" I love that guy.
I've never had any particular attachment to Santa. However, I knew that whoever I married would most likely have celebrated Christmas very differently than the way I did growing up (read: We did not celebrate it at all), and we would probably need to meet somewhere in the middle about what to do with the big guy in the red suit.
Weirdly, the thing that sealed the deal for us and shut Santa out of the Fenrick house was Piper's adoption.
Adoption can be so confusing, but we have always desired to be open with Piper about all of it. We want her to feel that she can come to us with questions about her adoption, and that she can trust us to give her true answers about it.
My fear with Santa (and the Tooth Fairy and the Easter Bunny) is that if we tell her for years that he exists and then Piper later finds out that he does not, how will she believe us about much else? Little people can be very intelligent, but their logic is often faulty. What if we continually told Piper that she was wanted and loved by her birth mother and by us (which is true), but the world tells her something different? What about God? Will she believe that he is real because we have repeatedly claimed that he is? Will we have proved ourselves to be trustworthy? Will she believe our voices about the others that she hears?
People seem shocked when I tell them that we do not "do Santa" with our children.
"Well do you even do Christmas?"
"What?! I can't imagine Christmas without Santa."
"That's like taking the magic of Christmas away from your child!"
Maybe I am a mean mom by depriving my girls of the Santa experience. I am totally willing to acknowledge that this is a possibility. I may look back when they're grown and realize that we did all of this wrong. Lord knows it won't be the only thing we messed up when they were little.
But to me, what's magical about Christmas is not Santa. It is Jesus.
It is magical that the God of all of the universe would come to our messy earth through the womb of a virgin...for me. That seems like a completely crazy thing to believe, but really not too much crazier than a guy living at the North Pole and traveling around the world in one night to give all the things to all the kids. I know that some people successfully pull off Santa and Christ in their own homes, but I guess I am too simple-minded for that.
Back to depriving my kids, can I tell you something?
Piper loves the story of Jesus. That kid wakes up asking when we get to do the "elephant (advent) calendar" and, "Is it Christmas yet? When do we get to put baby Jesus on the elephant calendar?" If you ask her, I don't think she would say that she is missing out on anything.
Truthfully, I have often woken up thinking about the advent calendar lately, too. I hear Piper's little voice reciting the Christmas story better than I can, and my cold heart melts a little more.
"Jesus is the greatest treasure of all. This is the story of how he came to us..."
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