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RE: My 3 year old thinks there is a Santa - 12/7/2008 1:48:21 PM
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Ellie-Mae
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From: The EMPIRE state!
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We never lied to our kids about Santa either. It has never been an issue until this last year with our now 5 year old. The place that we go to eat dinner on Mondays has a lot of elderly people. One of them is a dead ringer for Santa (except for the oxygen that he is hooked up to). Of course, he was absolutely tickled and told her that he was Santa. I think she understands now (with a little help), but they still like to pretend.
Now we do pretend the tooth fairy at our house. When our eldest was five and had his first wiggly tooth, he asked if we could pretend that there was a tooth fairy. We have had a lot of fun with that, and had to get pretty creative with it because they set up elaborate traps to catch "her" in the act. Our tooth fairy gives books, comic books, and the occasional pet fish.
Oh, and kids will have imaginations with or without a Santa. Children never needed a Santa in order to be imaginative or playful.
_____________________________
"You can" makes no difference. "You will" changes the world.
~BillyBob Jones in Grey soon to be authored by Caleb (12) for NaNoWriMo
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RE: My 3 year old thinks there is a Santa - 12/7/2008 2:11:19 PM
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cynthia
Posts: 6981
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From: Beautiful Puget Sound Region
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quote:
ORIGINAL: leah777
I don't disagree with the way it's been suggested to handle it here, just think we could all relax with our kids and allow them to enjoy their childhood a bit more. I guess I'm from a different era . . . one which encouraged imagination and seemed to not encourage pushing a kid to think like an adult . . I think that's done a lot these days -- by well-intentioned parents who just want the best for their child.
I do not think that parents need to lie to their children to encourage imagination. Children love to play make believe. When my children were little, they would spend hours dressing up and pretending they were any number of characters. We had dinosaurs, princesses, princes, beautiful ladies, fairies, etc. for years. Our house was like a living fairy tale. But our children knew it was all make-believe. They played Santa as well, but it was just another pretend fairy type of story. To this day, someone wears a Santa hat when we open gifts. They love to take turns being Santa. Since they know that Santa isn’t real and we have taught them the true meaning of Christmas, they can enjoy taking turns being the one who passes out the gifts, in the Santa role.
This doesn’t take way from the meaning of Christmas for us. Santa is not the centerpiece of Christmas. He is part of how we celebrate the giving of gifts to represent the wise men bringing gifts to Jesus and the gift that the Lord gave to us with His presence on earth and His ultimate sacrifice for us.
This approach has in no way diminished the imaginations of my children, nor have we pushed our children to think like adults. However, we do think that it is important for our children to learn early on to distinguish between reality and fantasy. I don’t know how that is making them think like adults. Furthermore, there are developmental stages that we cannot force. Children will think like children until they are ready to move forward to the next stage.
One of my daughter’s friends (PS) believed in Santa until she was eleven. When PS found out he wasn’t real, she was very upset that her parents had lied to her. PS told my daughter (TL) and was shocked to find out that TL had known all along and hadn’t told her. She was quite upset with TL for going along with the lie. TL told PS that she had simply not corrected her and had changed the subject when PS brought it up, because I had told TL not to interfere with what other parents were doing. PS understood, but felt really dumb having believed a fairy story for so long.
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RE: My 3 year old thinks there is a Santa - 12/7/2008 2:22:33 PM
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Sideways
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quote:
ORIGINAL: Ellie-Mae
It has never been an issue until this last year with our now 5 year old. The place that we go to eat dinner on Mondays has a lot of elderly people. One of them is a dead ringer for Santa (except for the oxygen that he is hooked up to).
I've always wondered how children react to seeing a real life Santa in normal clothes. I've met two, one at the church I mentioned, and one works at Office Depot. I'm a grown woman who never believed, but the Office Depot guy still stops me a little short.
Very nice fellow, though.
_____________________________
Row, row, row your boat, gently down the stream. If you see a crocodile, don't forget to scream.
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RE: My 3 year old thinks there is a Santa - 12/7/2008 5:02:36 PM
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coolfamily6
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We felt that it was confusing to kids to be taught that something make believe that that could see was "real" ie Santa. Then teaching them that something is real that they cannot see ie Christ.
When they were little and still now all their gifts come from us their stocking is from "Santa". I saw no point in allowing my kids to think that some makebelieve person provided them with the great gifts that daddy worked so hard to provide. When they asked about Santa, even at 3 or 4, we would say to them: Santa was a real person, Saint Nicholas, a long time ago who did nice things for people. Today, people chose to honor what he did by the character of Santa. Santa is like Barney (or whatever their fav character was). All of our kids did the leaving cookies out for Santa, visiting him at the mall if we happened to be there and even sometimes sending a letter. NONE WERE DEVESTATED TO FIND OUT HE WASN'T REAL because we always reinforced that he wasn't.
Finally, my oldest dd is 14 and still plays along for her younger sister who is 7. I am not 100% sure that my youngest believes he is real or not. She has asked more than once and I have always said no but she still talks about him.
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If your bible is a mess; your life won't be.
~Encouragement a mom gave to our children at our First Grader's Bible Ceremony!
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RE: My 3 year old thinks there is a Santa - 12/7/2008 7:15:29 PM
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ladyingrace1979
Posts: 236
Joined: 3/14/2008
From: Fresno CA
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quote:
ORIGINAL: leah777
I understand perfectly that Christian parents don't want to -- and shouldn't lie to their children, but I have to say that the whole 'devastation' thing has been carried a bit far, IMO. My parents weren't strong Christians, and we did the whole 'santa' thing (In fact, I did it with my kids, too).
I don't remember at what age I stopped believing in Santa, but I do know that I wasn't 'devastated' over my parents 'lying' to me, or even finding out he was no more than a make-believe character, and really hadn't delivered me all those presents at Christmas time. I honestly don't remember any thoughts of my parents 'lying' to me, so if I had those, I have to believe they were very short-lived. I wonder how many kids really are 'devastated' or even severely disappointed, let alone traumatized over that. We tell our kids many make-believe stories when they are growing up, and if it weren't for those stories, imagination might be all but extinct, so I hardly think it would harm them to believe this one for a while.
I don't disagree with the way it's been suggested to handle it here, just think we could all relax with our kids and allow them to enjoy their childhood a bit more. I guess I'm from a different era . . . one which encouraged imagination and seemed to not encourage pushing a kid to think like an adult . . I think that's done a lot these days -- by well-intentioned parents who just want the best for their child.
I totally agree with you. My oldest is 13 and knows the whole story of St. Nicholas. She was barely troubled by outgrowing Santa. When my little ones talk about Christmas, we just tell them that it's Jesus birthday but because God loves us so much we get presents. And that the best gift is Jesus coming as a baby so he would know what it's like to be human, and that He died for all the bad things we do.
I truly don't understand why parents are so troubled by Santa. We allow other make believe characters into our lives. As long as we continue to remind kids that it's Jesus birthday we are celebrating, the Santa character will take care of it's self.
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RE: My 3 year old thinks there is a Santa - 12/7/2008 8:04:55 PM
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manda59
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quote:
ORIGINAL: ladyingrace1979
I truly don't understand why parents are so troubled by Santa.
coolfamily6 summed it up very nicely:-
quote:
We felt that it was confusing to kids to be taught that something make believe that that could see was "real" ie Santa. Then teaching them that something is real that they cannot see ie Christ.
We didn't want our children thinking that Jesus was someone you stopped believing in when you got older, as happens with Santa. So ours knew right from the start that Santa wasn't real, and we gently reinforced this as and when necessary, allowing them to make-believe and letting them know it was fun to make-believe, but also making sure they always knew it was pretend.
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"Manda.....you said what I tried to say, just much better"
sharonjef, October 2009
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RE: My 3 year old thinks there is a Santa - 12/7/2008 8:41:58 PM
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cynthia
Posts: 6981
Joined: 3/31/2005
From: Beautiful Puget Sound Region
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quote:
ORIGINAL: ladyingrace1979
I truly don't understand why parents are so troubled by Santa. We allow other make believe characters into our lives.
My family doesn't "allow other make believe characters into our lives." I don't know what you're talking about. We simply do not lie to our children or try to make them believe in anything that isn't real. We don't try to "fix" other families or give them a hard time about teaching their children to believe in Santa. We are sure they aren’t trying to harm their children. I wonder why other people try to convince us that it's a harmless thing and then go on to say that we are not letting our children think like children or that we are somehow stifling their imaginations. Those are ridiculous charges. However, there is no getting around the fact that teaching a child to believe in Santa is to believe in a lie.
_____________________________
My husband and I have a motto:
We are the leader. We are one.
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RE: My 3 year old thinks there is a Santa - 12/7/2008 9:12:33 PM
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Sideways
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I've gotten the line "Christmas is more magical as a child when you believe in Santa." Well, I remember Christmas as child being plenty special and magical... Christmas Eve candlelit service, decorating the tree with my whole family, caroling...
Yes, Christ was a big part of it, but we enjoyed other things that weren't technically in a church building, without believing the lie of Santa. I wasn't robbed of anything.
_____________________________
Row, row, row your boat, gently down the stream. If you see a crocodile, don't forget to scream.
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RE: My 3 year old thinks there is a Santa - 12/7/2008 9:48:39 PM
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nicole6598
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coolfamily I like what you wrote. That's what my feeling is about it. Not teaching them about someone who is not real and someone who is but both being who you can't really physically see.
My dd knows that Christmas is not about Santa she will say "that's not Christmas" when she see's something about Santa on tv or in the catalogues etc but she also gets excited when she heard a story about him at Kindy. It's hard when they are so young and so very vulnerable. But we don't have any Santa or tooth fairy or Easter Bunny and our families know this too.
And for the record, I grew up being told Santa was real, when I found out he wasn't real I couldn't believe that my mum had lied when she told me not to lie, and then I had to keep pretending he was real as I was the eldest of 5 others!
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RE: My 3 year old thinks there is a Santa - 12/8/2008 8:45:43 AM
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macokjc
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I laughed when I saw this thread, because for some reason, my 3 year old is more fascinated with Santa then my other kids have ever been. I don't know if it's because we have cable and thus let them watch more Christmas specials than before........
We have always taught our children that Santa is not real, but can be a fun part of Christmas. I got slammed on another thread for denying my children an imagination, and I was shocked. My kids have NO problem with imaginative fun.
When our oldest was at the age of understanding about Christmas and presents, it dawned on us that the only reason children believe in Santa is because somebody tells them that it is true. They were not born with an inherent belief of Santa. We watched family members talk about Santa as if he were real (and not just a fun part of the holiday)- encouraging them to be good, to write letters, to go to bed because Santa was coming, etc... In order for a child to believe in Santa, they have to be lied to from the very beginning. That was not okay for us.
However, when they proceeded to inform two sets of cousins on each side that Santa was not real; we had to have a talk about how different families believe in different things.
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RE: My 3 year old thinks there is a Santa - 12/8/2008 9:25:49 AM
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buckifn
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I'm past 43 and still believe in Santa! I think the best approach for me with my kids was to share the story for the real Saint Nicklaus and then teach the kids ok now you be like him and go do something good to surprise someone else. I have never put the focus on buying material stuff and did not allow them to collect toy after toy all in the name of "Christmas"....going caroling, memorizing your part in the play at church, taking teddy bears to kids at the hospital or comm. center, serving in the soup kitchen, collecting food for families in need...those were and still are mostly what we focus on in our home....along with making cookies, candy and fudge together, singing carols around the tree....candlelight Communion....simple celebrations ...we always had a birthday cake for Baby Jesus on Christmas morning too.
Santa Claus is no different than anything else imo...the world offers it's version and we as parent's have the opportunity and responsibility to offer Christ in all we do.
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RE: My 3 year old thinks there is a Santa - 12/8/2008 10:26:32 AM
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Ellie-Mae
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I think it is odd that Christian would be offended by a parent choosing to use Jesus as their role model rather than a human or mythical person.
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"You can" makes no difference. "You will" changes the world.
~BillyBob Jones in Grey soon to be authored by Caleb (12) for NaNoWriMo
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RE: My 3 year old thinks there is a Santa - 12/8/2008 10:34:20 AM
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buckifn
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quote:
I prefer to teach my children to be like Jesus than to be like Santa. I honestly don't see the need for both.
I loved teaching my children to see Jesus in others.
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RE: My 3 year old thinks there is a Santa - 12/8/2008 10:34:23 AM
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Tinkerbell_
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It wasn't the statement...more of the tone.
IMO that's a given...Jesus is the ultimate role model.
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When I'm throwing punches in the air
When I'm broken down and I can't stand
Will you be strong enough to be my man?
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RE: My 3 year old thinks there is a Santa - 12/8/2008 10:40:52 AM
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buckifn
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quote:
It wasn't the statement...more of the tone.
I agree-- the tone of that post told me the person missed the entire point of my post....and in fact Jesus Himself taught many of the same things I posted about...do good to others, expect no reward in return, reach out to the hungry, the poor, the needy...
it's hard to imagine how anyone could find fault with those suggestions, esp. in a world of hurt such as we have now.
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RE: My 3 year old thinks there is a Santa - 12/8/2008 11:15:19 AM
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kohls356
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We didn't "do" Santa in our house when the kids were little. My middle daughter went through a phase of saying she believed in him and that was fine. I didn't discourage or encourage her. I am sure some kids are devastated to find out Santa isn't real but I often think that is more the part the parents have played with the Santa thing than anything else.
It is funny that my kids who are 18, 16, and 13 tell me now that they wished we had done Santa when they were little and they will do Santa with their children. It was my husband that didn't want to do Santa because at the time he was a new Christian and too easily influenced by what other told him. I think looking back now he sees that it really wasn't that big of a deal and we would have done Santa. At least I will get to enjoy Santa with my grandkids.
I always think back to my childhood. My mom made a decision to accept Christ when she was 18 but I was not raised in a Christian home. We believed in Santa and had fun with it. However, even at the youngest age I can remember, knew that Christmas was celebrating the birth of Jesus even though in my family that was not the focus. One of my fondest memories was going to the public park in our small town and seeing the nativity they would put up. I was more disappointed and devastated, if you will, when they no longer put the nativity out because of vandals than when I found out Santa wasn't real. I actually don't even remember finding out he wasn't real. I also loved putting our own nativity under the tree and I now have that nativity under my tree.
I really think if done right you can add Santa into the Christmas season without pushing the reason of celebrating Jesus's birth out.
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RE: My 3 year old thinks there is a Santa - 12/8/2008 11:26:07 AM
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coolfamily6
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[quote:
b]coolfamily6 summed it up very nicely:-
quote:
We felt that it was confusing to kids to be taught that something make believe that that could see was "real" ie Santa. Then teaching them that something is real that they cannot see ie Christ.We didn't want our children thinking that Jesus was someone you stopped believing in when you got older, as happens with Santa.
I was taught this before I became a parent by a wonderful preschool minister at our church. We have always reinforced that Christmas is a celebration of the birth of our Savior and that Santa is just for fun. I do not think my kids feel that they missed out on the joy of Christmas because they were never lied to about a makebelieve character. I felt that would have been like telling them Barney or the Veggies were real.
_____________________________
If your bible is a mess; your life won't be.
~Encouragement a mom gave to our children at our First Grader's Bible Ceremony!
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RE: My 3 year old thinks there is a Santa - 12/8/2008 11:31:14 AM
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emjayzee
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quote:
When they were little and still now all their gifts come from us their stocking is from "Santa".
This is what we do, too. It's fun to have a little excitement on Christmas morning, but we do all our presents on Christmas Eve. We have never said there is a Santa, but haven't said there isn't, either. When the kids ask something about Santa, we turn it back to them and ask what they think. With my oldest, these questions eventually caused him to think enough to bring out the truth. If I remember correctly, the last time he asked if Santa was real, we asked him what he thought, and he said something like, "It's fun to pretend he is." No lies, no joy lost, no devastation.
I remember when I found out about Santa. I was about 8 or 9. I was in front of my garage and my neighbor's older brother told me. I didn't believe him. I told him he was wrong. I don't remember ever confronting my parents about it, but maybe I did. Obviously at some point I stopped believing Santa was real. But I was never devastated, I never thought my parents lied to me, and it in no way affected by belief in Jesus.
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RE: My 3 year old thinks there is a Santa - 12/8/2008 12:08:41 PM
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IonMoon
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People need to understand that all kids are different and while some people go through even elaborate Santa rituals and grow up just fine... others do not. And there really is no way to know how a kid will react until they are grown. Also sometimes kids are affected and no one knows.
I had lots of reasons not to encourage my kids to believe... we played the Santa thing the same as any make believe character in their lives at that time- read the stories, etc. They never thought anything of it until they got older and found out some people actually BELIEVE in him. That confused them.
I do agree with whoever said above that the discrepancies in gift giving can be harmful. If kids think Santa (as they are often told!) gives gifts based on merit, they are going to compare what they get to what others get and it will affect their self-esteem/image and this can be negative whether they are getting more or less...
The programs that give presents to those in need are GREAT-- I always particpate, but they don't do anything about those discrepancies. And not everyone who gets less is getting less because they are in need. We have always only given a few modest gifts to our kids. My nieces (who had Santa beat into them!) never understood why my kids got a handful of things while they got PILES of things.
BTW- same is true for the tooth fairy- not every family is giving out quarters any more!
Tara P
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RE: My 3 year old thinks there is a Santa - 12/8/2008 12:14:31 PM
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Sideways
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My SIL is barely getting her girls anything this year, and not because they are poor. My younger niece is to little to care, and she has so much stuff already. My older niece will quickly tire of opening presents and flat out refuse to open any more.
My SIL still has all of her stocking gifts from last year, and she saved some presents for niece's next birthday. SIL knows that family will get her so much stuff it won't matter. So, niece will only open gifts from grandparents and aunts/uncles. That way she won't hurt anyone's feelings by refusing to open their gift (niece is incredibly stubborn).
For the record, we only got older niece one present, to reduce the odds of her being overwhelmed.
_____________________________
Row, row, row your boat, gently down the stream. If you see a crocodile, don't forget to scream.
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RE: My 3 year old thinks there is a Santa - 12/8/2008 1:07:00 PM
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journeyman7
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There seems to be quite a lot of good information already posted on this topic, but here is my two cents.
I think just about every three year old in America believes in Santa, even if you tell them otherwise. The subtle cues of Santa are everywhere, but we overlook them as adults. I don't really see anything wrong with pretending there is a Santa. My daughter believes there is a Santa and we play along in good fun. It is somewhat exciting for them and us as parents too.
I do agree that the notion of Santa, gifts, materialism, and other corporate feed agendas is so far off the actually message of Christmas that it is ridiculous. You can have both, you just have to realize the true meaning of Christmas.
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Mt 16:24 -
Then Jesus said to his disciples, "If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross and follow me
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I cried and cried. I'd be interested in hearing how you deal with this one. 
