We chose a few years ago to tell our (now 4 y/o) daughter that Santa isn't real. We did so to make sure we focused on the right things at Christmas, but we are sure to constantly remind her that other children do think he is real and it is important to not ruin that for them. Besides, we should spend our time telling people the Gospel of Jesus Christ...not debunking some story of a velvet wearing home invader. :P
Anyway, this morning I was shocked when my daughter asked if we could go down to a local store to see Santa. She actually prefaced the entire question by saying, "I know it's not really Santa, it's a guy dressed up like Santa". I was thinking of this as a great parenting opportunity, but my wife had a great idea and rightly said it would be a great witnessing opportunity. We decided that what we would do is ask our daughter if she wanted to bring a million dollar bill along and share the Gospel with the man dressed like Santa. She said "Yes". Praise the Lord!
There are a few lessons that I've (re)learned through this experience.
- Everything we do should be about spreading the Gospel. Believe me, I think of this all the time...but somehow I got lossed in "Being a good parent" & trying to teach my daughter something. All the while I neglected to teach her the most important lesson of all. That we must share the Gospel to all people.
- My wife is fantastic, and I am so blessed to have such a Christ focused woman as my bride.
- You can preach the Gospel everywhere, anytime. And we need to think harder about this when we plan our day.
19"Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I commanded you; and lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the age."
-W.S. (Mike)
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6 comments:
We have done the same thing about the Santa issue with all of our children as well.
But we have always just avoided the "mall Santas", thinking that the kids knew it was pointless and that we were merely saving ourselves the stress of standing in the horribly long lines.
It never occurred to me to bring the million dollar bill to Santa! What great idea!
Thanks for sharing. :o)
I cannot believe you... you... "judgmental, radical, cynic!" Your are now deemed as such! Here is your reward! http://www.geocities.com/jfreak_1983/mike_stamp.jpg
Dude, that is hilarous!
Oh, MY WORD -- that stamp is too funny! Except now, "The Wretch" and "Wretched Sinner?" Yeah. Too confusing.
Since birth, we instructed our families to NOT teach Hunter about Santa. Maybe I'll blog about that tomorrow...
Ironically me and my family went out looking at Christmas lights tonight. There are some rather large exhibits in the area. Some of them allow people to get out of their car and walk up to look.
These are typically loaded with people wandering around looking. Perfect for handing out tracts. So, me and my kids (8 year old daughter and 7 year old son) loaded up with million dollar bills to hand out.
One of the larger light exhibits had a Santa out front. We don't do Santa so my kids know he isn't real. But my daughter wanted to give Santa a million dollar bill. So she did!!It was cool...they had a blast handing out the MDBs. And we saw some cool lights too.
I did notice that there was a significant decrease in the number of people at the light exhibits this than there was in previous years. Maybe it's the economy or just the time we went this year? I don't know, but we did get to hand out some tracts!!
Awesome! Thanks for all the comments folks, this is really encouraging!
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