As I was driving home the other night after picking up one of my daughters from an after-school gig I was amazed to see a nativity scene on the side of the street. So amazed, in fact, that I swerved dangerously close to the curb to get a better look—an action that occasioned a lecture from my learner’s-permit-toting, back-seat-driving fifteen-year-old. On closer inspection, I realized that the nativity was behind glass in a shop window and was therefore a "private" rather than a "public" statement of faith. I experienced a fleeting sense of nostalgia for my childhood in England (when a nativity scene was always put up in front of our village library), followed by a brief resentment against the cultural marginalization of my beliefs. Then I shrugged and drove on, taking some small comfort in the fact that the shop-owners had had the courage of their convictions.

It’s tough being a Christian today, especially around this time of year. Unless you’re with friends of a similar faith, it’s increasingly considered gauche, if not downright oppressive, to wish anyone a "Merry Christmas." We’re supposed to greet everyone with a bland "Happy Holidays"—which, to my ear, sounds like the anemic equivalent of "Have a Nice Day." Add to all this the relentless commercialism of the season and it’s not surprising that thoughtful Christians are beginning to wonder about Santa Claus. Isn’t he just another one of those sentimentalized, candy-coated myths our culture trots out in order to boost sales and assuage our collective guilt over the neglect of our children the rest of the year? Or, worse, is he a harmful lie who stands between us and the message of Christ’s birth?

Santa is not only getting a bad rap from Christians nowadays but from many child psychologists who believe that the fostering of a belief in Santa in young children is tantamount to lying to them and can result in a loss of confidence in parental authority. Momentarily panicked by this, I asked my eleven-year-old son if he had been traumatized when he learned that Santa was fictitious. "Nope," was his pithy reply. Perhaps more telling is the fact that he and his two older sisters insist on promulgating the myth of Santa to their five-year-old brother who, like most children his age, fervently believes every word.

Santa has been part of the Wolfe Christmas tradition since our first-born was old enough to sit up without support. My children hang stockings from the mantel, have been read "A Night Before Christmas" countless times, and have had their photos taken with him in malls around the country. Eventually their musings on how on earth such a big, fat guy could get down such a narrow chimney, or how he could make it around the world in one night without the transporter from the starship Enterprise, began to erode their belief until it died a natural death at about the age of eight—an event that both my husband and myself mourned.

Children, it seems to me, have an uncanny ability to believe wholeheartedly in the essential truth of a story, while also knowing, deep-down, that it is just that—a story. Unlike adults, children do not have literal minds. They thrive on fantasy and myth and do not automatically assume that the term "fiction" means "lie." That is why there is nothing jarring about C. S. Lewis’s inclusion of a jolly Santa figure in his Christian allegory The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe.

The return of "Father Christmas" to Narnia is one of the first signs that the reign of the White Witch is over. He represents joy, gaiety, and generosity—all attributes that Lewis associated with the Divine. Even Santa’s traditional rotund girth is a sign of a spiritual expansiveness, an abundance (both literal and figurative) of grace and an unselfconscious celebration of the things of the earth.

Not only does Father Christmas bestow his unique benediction on the newly liberated (redeemed) Narnia, he also gives Peter, Susan, and Lucy special gifts (Edmund being otherwise occupied at the time). These gifts of sword, horn, bow and arrows, and diamond cordial bottle are intended as aids in each child’s individual journey to Aslan’s Country (Heaven). This moral link between the gift and the individual’s use of it echoes the traditional Christmas belief that Santa bestows gifts according to merit—"Now be good for goodness’ sake . . ." And yet it would be unheard of for a naughty child to wake up on Christmas morning and discover an empty stocking. In the same way, Susan receives her gifts of horn and bow even though she eventually loses faith in Aslan and Narnia. This is because grace, like God’s love, cannot be earned. It is always given unstintingly and unconditionally. Santa Claus is one of this culture’s last mediators of this glad tiding.

Now, more than ever, children need to believe in unconditional love. At a time when the parental gift of self (time, attention, patience, understanding, gentle but firm authority) is being increasingly replaced by material stuff ("Here’s your own cell-phone, son, so we can keep in touch when I’m on a business trip.") there is something immensely comforting to a young child to be able to snuggle on Santa’s lap and confide to him his or her hopes and wishes.

And for those who fear that the idea of a wish-list to Santa will turn their children into crass materialists, I believe that an unselfish disposition of soul can be nurtured in this instance just as effectively as in all other aspects of your child’s life. What your child asks of Santa will be conditioned by the way you’ve raised that child.

Despite their early belief in Santa, my children have never been in any doubt as to why we celebrate Christmas. We always have a nativity scene in our home, along with an Advent calendar and an Advent wreath. The children always loved to rearrange the figures in the stable. One year we had to substitute an X-Man for the Christ-child because the Jesus had gone missing. Another favorite activity is the opening of the windows in the calendar and the lighting of the candles each day at dinnertime.

It is also possible to explain the idea of Christmas to a little child in terms of Jesus’ birthday. A good idea is to actually bake Jesus a birthday cake and let the children decorate it and then blow out the candle. (We don’t do this in our family, but at Easter I do bake what has come to be called a "lamb" cake that the children love to decorate with coconut for the wool and jellybeans for the eyes, nose, and mouth.)

We read and hear every day that children are being forced to grow up more quickly than at any other time in American history. A belief in Santa Claus is one of the last vestiges of childhood and we should be leery of stripping it away from our children. Perhaps their early wonder at the unconditional generosity of a jolly man in a red suit will help inoculate them against the prevailing ethos of the zeitgeist that urges them to "look out for number one." In the words of the famous New York Sun 1897 editorial: "Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus. How dreary would be the world if there were no Santa Claus! The eternal light with which childhood fills the world would be extinguished."

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Suzanne M. Wolfe recently moved across the continent with her husband and four children—by car. She is executive editor of Image: A Journal of the Arts and Religion. She and her husband Gregory have written and edited several books—including The Family New Media Guide and their newest, Circle of Grace: Praying with—and for—Your Children (Ballantine 2000).

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Articles on the BreakPoint website are the responsibility of the authors and do not necessarily represent the opinions of Chuck Colson or Prison Fellowship Ministries.

© 2000 Suzanne M. Wolfe. All Rights Reserved.