Catholic Info
Traditional Catholic Faith => Catholic Living in the Modern World => Topic started by: Thed0ctor on November 23, 2022, 07:33:41 AM
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People at our church go back and forth on whether to do Santa, whether it's "lying" or just engaging the child's imagination. I'm curious how everyone here addresses the subject, what your traditions are etc.
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I don't have kiddos but, when I was a kid growing up, the idea of Santa was magical. The siblings and I would try to stay up all hours and catch the jolly, red-suited man dropping down the chimney to load up the loot. Never understood not hearing him park the sled on the roof. Great times.
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Ultimately I don't think it's worth doing, even if you can find a way to do it that avoids lying. Santa just encourages and habituated children to associate Christmas with gifts and materialism.
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But a bigger problem, IMO, is telling children that St Nicholas brings them gifts on December 6. It's one thing to create a myth around a mythical figure. Another thing to take a real saint and teach kids that he does something that he doesn't actually do. Maybe I'm projecting, but when I found out that Saint Nicholas wasn't really bringing gifts I started to wonder what other lies my religion was responsible for. Put me down a dark track.
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Maybe I'm projecting, but when I found out that Saint Nicholas wasn't really bringing gifts I started to wonder what other lies my religion was responsible for. Put me down a dark track.
How old were you when you started wondering about the lies of your religion? Seven? If you don't mind me asking, and you don't need to respond, what 'dark track' did the Santa Claus story send you down?
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This should be turned into a poll - who thinks Santa is bad news? lol
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We never taught our son that Santa Claus was a real person, nor that he brought gifts down the chimney on Christmas Eve. We followed the Polish tradition (I'm not Polish, his mother is) of St Nicholas having been a bishop, and that men dressed as St Nicholas (or a whimsical approximation thereof) brought presents to children. So our son never had a lie which he had to unravel and discover the truth of the matter.
I find the Santa Claus myth to be a wrong-headed Protestant invention, yet one more way in which they take a Catholic tradition and utterly butcher it beyond recognition. All Hallows' Eve, mutated to Hallowe'en, is another such instance. Outside of Anglican and possibly Lutheran circles, Protestants have no clue as to what All Saints' Day even is. Their view of Christmas and Easter is only slightly less obtuse, in that they realize there is some religious aspect to their origins.
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How old were you when you started wondering about the lies of your religion? Seven? If you don't mind me asking, and you don't need to respond, what 'dark track' did the Santa Claus story send you down?
I was 10 or 11 when I definitively confirmed that St Nicholas was not responsible for the gifts I received on Dec. 6. I suspected it, but could not confirm, probably since I was 8 or 9.
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I don't want to exaggerate the role St Nicholas's day played in my no longer practicing the Catholic religion. I don't mean to imply that I would have remained a pious boy if not for that. There were other factors, as there always are. But knowing that my parents spent years trying to get me to believe in something false was like finding the first loose thread that unravels a sweater. It made me cynical, resentful, and suspicious. Made me wonder if religion was a pious lie to get kids to behave.
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Simple. We grew up knowing that Santa Claus was actually St. Nicholas who is a Saint who actually did give gifts. The commercialism surrounding him came from Thomas Nast’s, The Night Before Christmas, which we knew was as real as Rudolf the Red Nosed Reindeer and later, the Grinch, IOW, that part was fiction, just for fun, nothing of religious belief.
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The actual Saint Nicholas leaving gifts for you without you being aware of it is like a miracle to a child. That is the problem. The only way for a child to explain it (if the child stops to think about it--which perhaps they won't) is through a miracle. What do you think happens when the only miracle a child has firsthand knowledge of turns out to be a fake?
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Mind you, having gifts on St Nicholas's day is fine. It's the pageantry of convincing small children that he actually and directly brought the gifts that creates a perfectly avoidable problem. Not to mention, although well intentioned, it is truly a LIE to tell children that Saint Nicholas brought them gifts.
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We told our children that Santa Claus was fictional character based on Saint Nicolas, but transformed by the americans to sell coca cola. They have never believed in this Santa nonsense, and, when younger routinely opened the eyes of other fooled children, making conspiracy theorists of them all.
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We never taught our son that Santa Claus was a real person, nor that he brought gifts down the chimney on Christmas Eve. We followed the Polish tradition (I'm not Polish, his mother is) of St Nicholas having been a bishop, and that men dressed as St Nicholas (or a whimsical approximation thereof) brought presents to children. So our son never had a lie which he had to unravel and discover the truth of the matter.
I do tell my son that Santa Claus is another name for St Nicholas and that he was Catholic (he has no concept of what a Bishop is). However, I failed to tell him that it is other men who dress like St Nicholas to bring presents. I guess it is not too late to start introducing those ideas so he won't be heart broken later on. As I child I did not grow up with stories of Santa which by the way, it was Coca cola that started hosting a Christmas parade in my small town and brought someone dressed like Santa around. I must admit, it was weird to see a grown man dressed that way.
At home having the Nativity scene is a must and Santa cannot be part of the Christmas decorations unless the Nativity scene is there and has a prominent place. Santa Claus cannot have a prominent place, he would be somewhere in the house but not at the entrance or next to the Christmas tree and never one a "live-size" Santa.
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Santa is used as a fun aspect of the holiday but I never told my kids he was real. They are familiar with St. Nicholas since we read the story on St. Nick's day.
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Our kids are 6,5 and 4 and so far Santa has been a non-issue. Pretty much all of our relatives do Santa and automatically think that we do too, and I don't always feel like telling them "we don't do Santa". They get asked what they want from Santa. So when the kids ask if Santa is real, I just kindly tell them no, he's just a character and that mommy and daddy give them gifts on Christmas. Then they'll ask, why do people keep asking me what I want from Santa? I just say that they are being silly. :laugh1:
While our kids know about St. Nicholas, and we do some traditions on Dec. 6th, I'll admit I feel like Catholic's put too much emphasis on St. Nicholas for Christmas. His feast day is on December 6th. Christmas is the Christ Child's day. Would it have been that way if Santa Clause never came about?
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As a child, I recall the only instance that had any major dealing with St. Nicholas, or Swiety Mikolaj, as this is a Polish story. :smirk:
I believe there was a to-do at our Polish Hall that reflected in some ways La Pastorela. I do recall angels and demons. Then Sw.M. would show up on stage, and all the children would go up and receive a HUGE bag of nuts and assorted goodies. St. Nicholas always remained as part of the Christmas pastiche but he never overshadowed Christ and His Blessed Mother. I do recall as well along the lines of St. Nicholas giving small gifts as the birth of Christ was (and is!) the GIFT at Christmas.
I did get my picture taken with Santa Claus in my early years. In those days, you would never see any Christmas decorations or Santa castle/sleigh until late November or early December. Twere magical days indeed, in the sense that I could palpably sense the spirit (the grace of the holy season) of the Yuletide. The Twelve Days of Christmas, beginning with the Polish Christmas Eve celebration, were truly perceived as a different space in time.
I never married thus no kids and Santa is but a large candle who is not prominently placed, although visible. I do believe we have a Father Christmas figure that belonged to my mother - a gift given to her. Santa is a non-persona amongst some of the children I know from our neosspx mission.
As for the other side or part thereof of the mythos accuмulated around St. Nicholas, I do know we were taught the various European traditions surrounding him and Christmas in my primary/elementary days, so I was aware of Black Peter. I only heard of Krampus when I taught at a Society school. I ended up being St. Nicholas that year, with one of my high school students being Krampus, although no where at overt in costume as that particular figure is portrayed.
(https://imgix.bustle.com/lovelace/uploads/477/ba56e4c0-9959-0134-ce69-0aec1efe63a9.jpg?w=760&h=1207&fit=crop&crop=faces&auto=format%2Ccompress&q=50&dpr=2)
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I don't want to exaggerate the role St Nicholas's day played in my no longer practicing the Catholic religion. I don't mean to imply that I would have remained a pious boy if not for that. There were other factors, as there always are. But knowing that my parents spent years trying to get me to believe in something false was like finding the first loose thread that unravels a sweater. It made me cynical, resentful, and suspicious. Made me wonder if religion was a pious lie to get kids to behave.
I had the same experience of finding out I'd been lied to by the same people who sent me to Catholic school. Another thing about Santa that freaked me out was the song:
He sees you when you're sleeping,
he knows when you're awake.
He knows if you've been good or bad
so be good for goodness sake.
Sort of like the NSA.
Creepy.
Santa is banned in our home.
Just nativity sets, lights, boughs and bows.
And Christmas cookies include stars and angels.
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I put two and two together early on because we didn't have a chimney.
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I have told the children the truth since the beginning.
Santa is not real and that the world has used him to make Christmas about gifts ant about the birth of Jesus.
We do St.Nicholas day with small gifts in the shoes, reading of his story/watching the cartoon st.nicholas movie and a special dinner and dessert.
Also we do a birthday cake on Christmas and give only one gift, but 3 gifts on the Epiphany.
One thing I would like to get better at is for my children to give somehow rather than expecting to receive.
We do have them use their own money to buy one another gifts, including for mama and papi (me and my husband), but even for them to find more opportunities to give in order to show the love/light of Christ.
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We had a chimney but the fireplace was blocked by a Kosi heater. That didn’t prevent the arrival of Santa.
We children saved our pennies and went shpping for small gifts for each other and our parents. Today it seems more like Gimme, Gimme, Gimme, whereas ours was more for sharing.
I have a photo of myself taken 73 years ago. I was sitting on this old bloke’s knee, a terrified look on my face.
My own children did not have Santa at all. One Christmas morning a lady at church asked my eldest Did Santa bring you something nice, or words to that effect. He just looked at her blankly.
I have always had a horror of consumerism. Besides my husband had very little tradition of gift giving, and none at all of Santa. His Christmas stocking was stocked with fruit and sweets for good boys :popcorn: And coal for bad boys. :fryingpan:
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I put two and two together early on because we didn't have a chimney.
:laugh1:
I've never understood how parents have the time and energy to keep up with make-believe stories. Just for starters, I wouldn't be able to wrap presents in reused boxes and still keep my story straight. We've rarely opened presents first thing on Christmas morning. Whether it's sleeping in after midnight Mass or getting up for morning Mass, squeezing in time for the usual Santa nonsense just doesn't make much sense to me.
We do celebrate St. Nicholas day by giving the kids small treats and often some new books, but those gifts are to commemorate the feast day and are not actually "from" St. Nicholas.
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I had the same experience of finding out I'd been lied to by the same people who sent me to Catholic school. Another thing about Santa that freaked me out was the song:
He sees you when you're sleeping,
he knows when you're awake.
He knows if you've been good or bad
so be good for goodness sake.
Sort of like the NSA.
Creepy.
Santa is banned in our home.
Just nativity sets, lights, boughs and bows.
And Christmas cookies include stars and angels.
He sees you when you're sleeping,
He KNOWS when you're awake,
Santa is the KGB,Run Comrade!
Your life tis at stake!
So better watch out,
you better not cry (Facecrime!)
Keep your trap shut,
I am telling you why,
cuz the Gulag sleigh is coming to town!
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And there is more......
For those who remember the Rankin/Bass stop motion "holiday" classic Rudolf the Red Nosed Venison ...ahem...reindeer.....
See how Santa is portrayed therein, and you find he is a real schmuck. :trollface:
Santa is the bad goyim-ski and Rudolf is the heroic Judenhoofer - since this story was written by a perfidiously fake Red Sea Pedestrian!