Christians & Father Christmas

[FaithLoveandGrace]

Hi all, I had an interesting chat with someone earlier this week about teaching children about Father Christmas as a Christian. They said they've never taught their children about Father Christmas as they thought once their DC found out he's not real, they'd also think Jesus is not real either.

It got me thinking, how do you teach children that what you told them about Father Christmas (or the Easter Bunny or tooth faith) is not true but that (in our opinion) what we've told them about Jesus is? I'm not entirely sure where I stand on the issue tbh. DSS believes in Father Christmas and I wouldn't tell him otherwise - that's up to his dad (my DP) and his mum. As much as I love how magical Christmas is for DSS and the other children I know, I'm not sure I'd feel comfortable lying to any biological children DP and I may have.

I'd be interested to hear others views on it.

i know - especially with such wealth disparity. does that mean the children of skint families are naughty?

i think children need to know the value of money personally - i don't want them weighed down with it but i'd rather my son understood i bought the things he gets with money and that that money was earned. he also has a good understanding of value and am pleased to say he has developed a shock face when he sees the price of some piece of plastic advertised on tv

we'll do our saint nic bit after christmas when we go away. there are little kids trawling the beach selling friendship bracelets where we go and i'm trying to think of little things we could take for him to give them that they might appreciate. we were going to do a run to the food bank with some food and old coats but unfortunately i've been ill.

i think what i personally need to do is rethink the whole festival and find a way to make it authentic for me so that i feel more comfortable with it.

i was raised as a catholic by the way - and with father christmas. so a christian christmas with the secular trimmings like most. i'm not sure at all what it means to me now other than a need to observe it for my sons sake.

i need to rethink that and find meaning in it for me that i am comfortable with.

*Bigblue said Quite amusing to think of christians laying offerings ( milk, biscuit) at the hearth - offerings at the altar for the anti-christ.

Backonly said, ^Oh I get it now, educationrocks1. You thought bigblue was saying that you specifically and other Christians put offerings on the hearth and say it's for the anti-christ.

It was a reference to the milk and cookies for Santa and I'm fairly sure that bigbluestars did NOT say "and educationrocks1 does this".

That's exactly what she said. If I'm a Christian, then this statement includes everyone, she doesn't need to say my name specifically. She was trying to be goady.

In any case, are you now saying that it is Chrisians who put milk and biscuits out for their husbands Santa, that are Infact making offerings to the antichrist?

We just say we like to give gifts at Christmas ourselves - following the example of Saint Nicholas. Your beach seller and food bank ideas sound really nice.

My mother was raised Catholic too (not so much practising now) and she is a right one for a very tall story! We had elves, pixies, robins, the bogie man and Wee Willie Winkie watching us. The thought of getting a sack of coal mortified me. I was convinced I heard sleigh bells on Chistmas Eve and I thought the mocked up sleigh ride in a department store was all real - I truly wanted to get off for a bit and run through the snowy woods! Shows you how powerful an imagination can be. Needless to say I was very shocked and hurt when I found that was just made up....

It is Biblical how a spirit can join people together, as in the body of Christ. However this seems to have been interpreted into a very literal manifestation of a flesh and blood Santa Claus appearing and giving gifts at Christmas, which is interesting in a collective psychological imagination sort of way.

Why not read up on the story behind Father Christmas? St Nicholas

Also Father Christmas can be minimalised just to leave a stocking, while you/friends/relatives leave tree gifts

Milk and cookies? It's brandy and mince pies surely? Santa wouldn't visit our home if not....

We've done a mixture depending on the child. DD was another one terrified of santa when she was small so we had to go very lightly on it. Ds was convinced so we played along but always told the story of St nick as the origin. I never had a problem with them believing/playing the game - it's always been an enjoyable part of Christmas, something the complements us celebrating Christ's birth.

As for trees, the story of St Boniface is an interesting one - would link but on phone - basically an 8th century monk I recall who went to Germany, protested against child sacrifice that was taking place around an old oak tree as a tradition then felled it and pointed out a small fir tree as being everge en which reminds us of Christ's love - and suggest they use that as a memorial rather than sacrficsacrifice children at an oak tree. Hence one of origins of Christmas tree.

Blonde erm I take it your posts were to the OP's first post. (You might want to read more of the thread)

Sorry for stupid phone typos

educationrocks1, give it up. it's not going anywhere because anyone can go back and read what was actually said :)

Ooh thanks Mad, I 'll have to look Saint Boniface up. (Don't worry about typos, I make loads when I'm not on the phone. Often I press post too soon!)

Yes Backonly especially now that it shows you were trying to backtrack on your post . Merry Xmas.

i like the idea of making it, for us, a festival of light essentially and just explaining to ds the different festivals that exist for different religions around that time of year - so solstice, divali, hannukah, christian christmas, etc.

i like solstice because for me it's unifying in that it doesn't have to be 'religious' or have a mythology about it - it can just be used to talk about the year and what it must have been like pre electricity and freezers etc and how life inspiring it must have been to get together and have a big party and feast at that point where people were living pretty reclusively itms.

i don't see marking periods of the year as pagan as such but just natural - it seems entirely natural to me that christianity mapped onto those natural patterns (whether you see christianity as true or untrue) because that is the template we have for our spirituality and sense of meaning in the natural world.

i kind of hate the pressure and materialism of christmas but i do think it's a choice how far you take that.

on christmas eve i like to light lots and lots of candles and we talk about how even in the darkest point of the year there's the hope and knowledge that summer will come again, and how christians believe that jesus being born was the light coming into the world and some people believe that just family coming together and being kind to each other is the light etc. i'm more of a menu offerer than an indoctrinator.

think i'll keep emphasising the diversity of it and maybe involve ds too in deciding how we celebrate it.

TheHoneyBadger you are right, in that marking periods of the year does not have to be seen as pagan in particular. Many (most) churches have a calendar of events.

However one of the reasons I am Christian is the grace and redemption Christ offers, as in we are not saved by our own works but by grace. This has implications also on the power of rites and rituals, the level of importance assigned to rites and rituals, in that it is not correctly performing rite or ritual that provides power/righteousness but God's grace.

I have some difficulty with how the Sacraments are regarded by some, in some churches. When rule and regulations are seen as of utmost importance regarding how they are carried out, rather than the meaning behind performing a rite or ritual it seems to be the wrong emphasis to me. I can see Sacraments can strengthen faith and can be a profound experience, however for me an internal remembrance of Christ is Sacramental enough, which is a looser definition than some would hold. Remembrance is enough to change me, causing Him to manifest in me, (change me physically as though patterns change brain physiology which in turn affects the body) as I acknowledge and remember Him and His works.

So for me the pattern, rite, rituals, traditions can be good, in that they promote a remembrance and strengthen faith but should not be done for their own sake. The meaning of them (which can be personal) is of primary importance to me. If a tradition has bad memories or negative associations it would serve me less well so I would not continue it (at all or in the same form) or I would change the negative associations and replace them with something positive.

i think even you would find my beliefs strange despite there being a similar ring to what you say.

it'd take too long to explain what i think the body of christ is or how the 'spirit' can be understood (despite the fact to me it seems entirely in line with the gospel teachings) but 'if' i was saved then i am saved and 'if' the spirit lives in me and guides me then it matters not a toss whether my life or language say appears externally to look like whichever version of a modern day pharisee group it was to be compared to and it doesn't even matter if i call myself a christian.

but yes, people like their simplicity and clubs and rituals and rules.

and they like to take something vast and apparently incomprehensible and put it in a neat little box.

it's not just christians mind. i have a friend who because i've had certain experiences wants to preach to me about buddhism and what those experiences mean and what i should do and how lucky i am and what i can attain and what worth i should attribute to them. all based on his reading and what he has been taught by 'masters' rather than his own direct experience.

i discussed all this with someone once who said yes but this is because you are a mystic which i took to be an insult he explained it just meant that i experienced these things directly and didn't believe they could be grasped with the intellect and accessed them differently. i don't know if that's true but i have been blessed with a lot of awesome experiences and yet they don't cause me to want to put labels on them and actually they give me an instinctive aversion to labeling.

i'm going to wish i hadn't posted any of this. in my defense i've had flu and am a few days into being bedridden and in and out of consciousness.

TheHoneyBadger what you have said does not seem particularly strange to me. There is Christian mysticism too. The Bible also shows how people's expression of their faith can differ, within Christianity and how people can not judge others.

I totally agree with what you say about Pharisees. I do think though, there is balance with everything, if for example someone tried to tell me what to do purely based a 'vision' of their's or communication with an 'angel' I would be rightly cautious!

And yes, God cannot be put in a box by us (well there was the Ark of the Covenant which God ordained, so He put Himself in there, but this showed just how fearsomely powerful God is whilst still inside a box!). But yes there is great mystery and I love mysteries too.

thanks capsium. i gave up on these discussions with family and the like. there are certain passages that seem to get glanced over that to me seem the most meaningful - like the one where to paraphrase it is ok to deny jesus but to blaspheme against/deny the spirit is unforgivable or dooms one. i think it is fine to take a religious path but i don't think it is essential.

Yes. If a person is not changed or moved by the Holy Spirit, at all, they can become totally apart from God - doomed/damned according to Christian belief.

Religion does not change this, as laws can be adhered to, rites and rituals can be performed but it is God's grace that saves us not our performance according to laws or rites and rituals.

There seems a strange modern and post-modern denial that the UK was Christianised a very long time ago. Many of the peoples of these islands (in what is now Wales, Ireland and Northern England) were already practicing Christians when Augustine and 40 monks turned up on a mission in the 6th century. The Celts living here had absorbed the faith from Celts trading and traveling from modern day France and other European regions. They were not backed by an army, preaching and persuasion was enough for the population of the British Isles to voluntarily abandon pagan beliefs. I'm not sure why all the deep history found in every corner of these islands of Christian belief for 1500+ years is denied by so many posters. It was if we were all worshipping the Green Man and Yew trees last week and a bunch of Christians barged in.

Francis I think from the times of the Victorian Gothic Revival people were becoming more interested in folk beliefs and eastern mysticism and then again with the hippy movement in the 70s and the New Age movements more recently - people have been interested (and adopted) in more esoteric beliefs. Hence the interest in the Green Man etc. I myself studied English literature which included quite a bit of folklore and fairy tales. Remnants of these beliefs in terms of symbolism and schema still survive in our culture and imaginations. Not that that does not make a person Christian. As I indicated before, I think it is part of human psychology to have a symbolic and ritualistic language, as a type of schema, the Bible is rich with symbolism and rituals derived from this symbolism - I see the early Christians as utilising the existing schema of a Pagan people and translating Christ's message into it.

(And of course before the Gothic Revival there was the Renaissance and the 'Enlightenment'...)

I think whatever language is used whether symbolic, ritualistic, literal, written, spoken, narrative, mathematic, scientific; it is the message conveyed that is important.

I don't know the date historians would mark as when the UK was 'Christianised', but I'm sure it was a long time ago. Not sure what difference that makes. Does a belief gain some special legitimacy after x years?

If that's how it works then we should bear in mind that Christianity has only been around for 2,000 years (and would have been small/local at first). In the lifespan of the human race that's like 20 minutes ago.

I'm a christian. Never told any of my children the usual lies. We do not celebrate Christmas, as there is no biblical mandate for it. We have explained to them why (we think) other's do. We do celebrate other biblical festivities.