Children often struggle to sort out fact from fantasy when it comes to Christmas.  I recall the growing scepticism of one of my own children and how that increased after she noticed that two different retail stores had two quite different looking Santas.  On the other hand there’s the story of the lad who became even more convinced that Santa was real after his parents took him to a social event where Santa made an appearance.  The parents had been asked to bring presents for their own kids.  This lad’s mother had bought each of her three children a beach towel with their names printed on them.  Later the lad was heard explaining to his little sister that Santa must be real because how else would he know their names.

One problem is that the religious and the secular easily become confused.  A young lassie was pretending to read a Christmas story to her baby brother.  Her mother heard her say, “And then Santa forgave them their trespasses...!”  Starve the lizards...!  That’s attributing the things of God to the fantasy figure of Santa.

It worries me that today the trend is for the reindeer to trump the angels – and for the sleigh laden with gifts to trump the manger in the stable.  I’m not sure that nativity scenes ever outnumbered scenes from Santa’s domain but I think it would be fair to say that in our culture we no longer see as many nativity scenes as we used to.

Do I have a problem with Santa?  No and yes!

I have no problems with Santa because he’s a real historical figure.  Maybe you’re surprised to hear me say that when I’ve just talked about Santa in terms of fantasy.

However the point is that the real Santa was born in the year 280.  His name was Nicholas.  His parents were wealthy, and committed to the Christian faith.  As a child Nicholas was devoted to God.  It is said that he fasted every Wednesday and Friday.  His mother and father died while Nicholas was still quite young.  From that time on, he dedicated his life to Christian service.  Many stories are told of his generosity.  In many parts of the world he is still remembered as St Nicholas.  It certainly alters people’s perspective when they realise that the original Santa’s generosity was out of thankfulness to God.

In the Netherlands the custom grew of celebrating December 5th, the eve of St. Nicholas’ birthday.  Today Dutch families still have parties and give gifts – they feast, waiting for a visit from St. Nicholas who comes dressed as a bishop in red velvet robes, a long white beard and a miter (the bishop’s pointed hat).  Before going to bed children leave their shoes by the fireplace hoping St. Nicholas will return, climb down the chimney and fill the shoes with goodies while they sleep.

When Dutch migrants arrived in New York in the 17th century they brought the St. Nicholas tradition with them.  Over the next few centuries he appeared in art and poetry – gradually changing till he became the Santa Claus of today.  So I’m in favour of keeping Santa employed – but it should be made compulsory for people to read the story of the real Santa – St Nicholas!

So that’s the ‘Yes’ part of the answer to the question whether I’m in favour of Santa.  What about the ‘No!’ part?

Well, my biggest concern is that we live in a culture where we think that being good gets you into heaven.  The average Aussie believes that as long as our good deeds outweigh our bad deeds God will smile favourably upon us.  In other words, God’s pass mark is 51 percent.  They find it hard to grasp the Bible’s concept that God demands perfection.  Here we need to face the fact that the present day version of Santa encourages this “salvation by works” mentality.  Santa rewards those who are good – and if we encourage that sort of thinking in our children it will be much more difficult to undo that when we want to tell them that we are never good enough for God – our only hope is that Jesus was good in our place.

And that’s precisely the reason why that nativity scene is so important.  Jesus was born in Bethlehem to provide a way for us to be reconciled to the God whom we alienated by our sin and rebellion.  To put it bluntly: He came to make us good.

John Westendorp