Long
ago, a Christian friend of mine said he would not teach his young children
about the myth of Santa Claus as it was a distortion of the true
meaning of Christmas. I don't know whether he went on to fulfill
that assertion, but I think that if he did, it was to his children's detriment.
Santa
is one of the “good myths” that C.S. Lewis talked about and he
holds an important, formative place in the imagination of children.
Long before I understood the meaning and primacy of Jesus in my life,
Santa Claus occupied and in fact, created, a space within me which Jesus would later occupy. The myth of Santa was perhaps my first
encounter with the magical sense of the otherworldly and supernatural
to which good religion should bring us. Santa was the first being who
allowed me to know and exercise faith in that which I couldn't see
and who first caused me to feel responsibility to a higher power whom
my senses couldn't know. In short, he prepared me to be a Christian.
He
was a giver of gifts and taught me the value of being one myself. He
was an unerring doer of good and inspired me to try to be the same.
I was taught that he had the power to transcend time and logic in a
way that a child could understand and accept. That acceptance was
the first instance I had that prepared me for my eventual faith in
the Almighty.
I
hope that my friend didn't deny his children the capacity to dream
the good dreams of “sugarplums dancing in their heads” which, in
their maturity, could be replaced with the sure knowledge of God.
I thought about this after reading the following article posted to Facebook by my friend and former associate pastor, Fr. Addison Hart.
http://www.christiancentury.org/article/2012-09/saved-fiction#.UJ6C-bytCY8.facebook
