I am not a fan of Santa. It drives me crazy when I see Christmas decorations before Thanksgiving. I get my tree between the 10-15th of December and don’t you dare play Christmas music before December 1st.
I like to consider myself a traditionalist, Christmas season goes from December 25th to January 6th –but my friends and coworkers jokily call me the Grinch.
Now back to my Santa issue, there are two reasons I was never a fan. First, I didn’t grow up believing in him; my family celebrated the Three Wise Men, which delivered toys on January 6th. The second, I thought it always trumps the real reason we celebrate Christmas—which is Christ. At least looking at it from society’s eyes. Maybe if he came on 1 or 2 days after, I wouldn’t mind it so much.
This was all fine before I had my foster kids. It was just me and my husband, and he was okay with my strict Christmas beliefs. However, now that we have kids, they wanted to start listening to Christmas music before Thanksgiving and can’t stop talking about Santa.
So I told them Santa is not real… I kid, I kid… Don’t put me on the naughty list. Santa will come to my house.
However, I had to reconsider my “Grinch ways” (like a friend told me). It all came back to my original issue, I wanted to make Jesus the center of Christmas, but maintain the traditions they grew up with.
They are little so I had to get them excited about Christ. I decided to start some new Christmas activities and traditions:
- Read children books about the Birth of Jesus
- Do some biblical coloring and activity worksheets. I found a good library here: https://ministry-to-children.com/christmas-ss/
- Celebrating Jesus’ Birthday on the 25th with cupcakes (Singing Happy Birthday)
- Make a nativity scene out of a sticker’s nativity set.
- I got an ornament book with the different names of Jesus, and so we are reading the book and hanging one ornament every day.
My kids are young so they have a short attention span. As they grow older, I hope to incorporate other activities including helping in a soup kitchen. I found some good ideas here: https://www.lifewithmylittles.com/teaching-kids-the-true-meaning-of-christmas/.
Hope you are able to find an activity that celebrates the true meaning of Christmas. When you get right down to it the only thing that really matters is Jesus.
Celebrating the true meaning of Christmas with you.
Milo
