Like many of you, my wife and I desire that this season of "giving" be more about Jesus' incarnation than about presents. This is a difficult task when strangers take it upon themselves to make small talk with my daughters while in line at the grocery store by asking them what presents Santa will be bringing them for Christmas. We are far from having all of this figured out, but there are a few things that we do as a family to make much of Jesus during the month of December:
We don't "do" Santa. Without going too deep into the issue here, the biggest reason we don't "do" Santa is because we don't want to set our kids up for what essentially amounts to an elaborate hoax. Now, we do "pretend" in some respects, such as pretending the stockings are from Santa (this is new this year at the encouragement of my lovely wife). As the kids get older, we'll also teach them the legend of Saint Nicholas. (For a great view on how to "redeem" Santa, check out Mark Driscoll's 2010 Washington Post article on "What We Tell Our Kids About Santa" here).
We make the message of Christmas as simple as possible. Our kids are three and four this year. With all the nativity scenes, innkeepers, and talk about Jesus' birthday, I'd imagine that it would be difficult for small kids to grasp the central message of Jesus. (Don't even bring up the Wise Men. They're not supposed to even arrive on the scene until Epiphany.) So, at least once a day, I tell my kids why we celebrate Christmas: we are celebrating when Jesus came to Earth to rescue us.
We don't go overboard on presents. This one is hard to do when you're a dad who loves his kids. We don't really have a line (other than our budget we set for ourselves), but to put it simply, we don't go nuts or go into debt to get great presents for our kids. In fact, we've spent less on gifts every Christmas since we've been married, Giving gifts and being generous to your kids is a good sign of love and affection that does reflect the giving nature of our Heavenly Father. But it does our kids more harm than good to teach them that they will always get just about every item on their wish list.
We try to create traditions that have to do with Jesus. One of my favorite things we do as a family on December 23rd (when our family celebrates Christmas Eve wince I am at church on the 24th) is to watch the Charlie Brown Christmas Special, drink hot chocolate, and read the biblical account of Jesus' birth. I think we could do a bit more in this area, but we'd rather our kids get excited about traditions that have to do with Jesus than love the season just because they're going to get presents.
QUESTION: What are some fun traditions that have helped you to make much of Jesus in your family during the Christmas season?
