Santa Is Not Good for Raising Young Catholics

"Tell Santa what you want for Christmas!" Hasn't anyone besides me ever noticed that this admonition is not good training for young Christians? On the other hand, it is great training for young consumers.  

Encouraging our children to dream of material things they want is great training for covetousness. It puts a burden on parents who may not be able to reasonably afford the expense of buying what's on the child's list, or who perhaps might want to change the focus of Christmas celebrations towards Christ. It encourages children to indulge their natural human greediness instead of curbing it. It sets unreal expectations too. A child who does not get exactly what he or she wants is going to feel deprived.

Retailers love a Santa Claus-inspired Christmas, which is why they start the "season" as early as possible, to enable the maximum number of "shopping days til Christmas" every year. They also count on the fact that while we are shopping for luxuries for our children, we are also picking up luxuries for ourselves. 

It's all about self indulgence. When we are buying our little darlings everything they ever wanted, aren't we also buying luxuries for ourselves?

To my mind, we celebrate Christmas wrongly as a months long orgy of buying, sentimentality, glitter, and gluttony. These things are far removed from the poverty of the stable where the son of God came into this world. The feast of Christmas is about our God who had everything making Himself a poor human for our sake.

"For God so loved the world, as to give his only begotten Son; that whosoever believeth in him, may not perish, but may have life everlasting."—John 3:16

One way you can tell that all that excitement has nothing to do with Christmas is that all the hyperactivity stops on Christmas Eve. You'd be hard put to find a Christmas hymn playing on the actual day of Christmas. There's no money to be made any more. So the din ceases and the thrills fade away. 

The tree that has been up since Thanksgiving is often discarded on the 26th of December, only on the second day of what should be the actual celebration. 

The actual person who inspired the Santa Claus legend is St. Nicholas, and his Feast Day is December 6. "Who is St. Nicholas?" has a good write-up about how St. Nicholas became associated with being a protector of children. 

 
In most of Europe, gifts are given on St. Nicholas Day, December 6, instead of on Christmas. This helps keep the focus on awe and gratitude for God's precious gift to us at Christmas. 

We owe more of our present day idea of Santa Claus to Coca Cola than to St. Nicholas. Santa Claus' suit is the Coca Cola brand color. He's a marketing device. Many a Coca Cola ad shows Santa with his head thrown back swigging a bottle of Coke, and it says, "Open happiness." No, Virginia, happiness is not to be found in swigging Coca Cola. It is to be found only in knowing, loving, and serving Christ.

Santa Open Happiness Coca Cola Billboard

Santa and Coca Cola together, even in Assisi, Italy (Christmas Eve 1999).

What's even worse, the elaborate fictions about Santa Claus that society spins out during every child's early years also teach children that their parents and teachers, indeed the whole society, are capable of lying to them. And I truly believe those lies children hear from us about Santa make it easier as they grow up for children to dismiss the Virgin Birth of Christ, the angels, the shepherds, and the Three Kings, indeed the whole Catholic faith, as a collection of similar well-meaning sentimental fictions.

The Discovery, cover painting for the Saturday Evening Post, December 29, 1956 by Norman Rockwell.

What do you think? Do you agree with me that telling kids to ask Santa for what they want teaches them to be acquisitive?  How did you feel when you found out Santa isn't real? Have you ever thought that when kids lose faith in Santa they often lose trust and eventually lose faith in the truths of the Catholic faith?