the question of christmas

“Let God Be True” was the title of an article by Brother Chris Maddocks, which appeared in The Christadelphian Waymark Volume 8, Issue 6. He was commenting on a correspondent who criticized him for contending that “to teach children to believe in Santa Claus was a form of idolatry”.

There is no such person of course as Santa Claus: he is the figment of man’s imagination, and is connected with St Nicholas who is the patron saint of thieves. This “St. Nicholas” is associated with the Nicholaitanes whose deeds were hated by our Lord Jesus and the Ephesian ecclesia (Rev. 2:6).

The whole celebration of Christmas is really the pagan festival Saturnalia, wild revelry, which has no association with the Truth. The exact date of Christ’s birth is unknown to man, but it is the death of Christ and his resurrection which we are commanded to remember and celebrate each week, until he returns to the earth to continue the work of our heavenly Father.

The gift he brings is eternal life for those who seek him and keep his commandments; such things as we should be taught from a child. Christ was born in our nature of sinful flesh which is not to be glorified.

To believe in this imaginary Santa, is to believe a lie, shouldn’t we teach children the truth from the very first? If we teach them a lie, how will they learn to trust us when the Santa myth is eventually exposed?

The apostle Paul conveys to Timothy: “and that from a child thou hast known the Holy Scriptures, which are able to make thee wise unto salvation”. Paul also commends Timothy’s Grandmother and mother for their “unfeigned faith” to “train up a child in the way he should go”.

The Scriptures teach us the right ways of the Truth, that we instruct our children too; the serpent’s lie to Adam and Eve brought about their misery and death which has cursed us also.

Deuteronomy chapter 6 exhorts us with divine wisdom and education, it sets before us the first and great commandment which few submit to obey: “thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thine heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy might. And these words, which I command thee this day shall be in thine heart: and thou shalt teach them diligently unto thy children, and shalt talk of them thou when thou sittest in thine house, and when thou walkest by the way, and when thou liest down, and when thou risest up”.

The pure words of Truth should be our thought, conversation and action at all times. No place for fairy tales which deceive children’s minds; and “when thy son asketh thee in time to come, saying What mean the testimonies, and statutes, the judgments, which the Lord our God hath commanded you?” You open the Scriptures and relate the truth without compromise and discount worldly fables which have no foundation or salvation value.

We should teach that the only gift to desire is God’s Word containing the precious gift of eternal life to those who believe and obey. So many gifts give to children especially at Christmas are hastily unwrapped and discarded for the next one. The formation of so much greed, lust and dissatisfaction. This surely, is more harmful.

We cannot do this with the Truth. Children need to be taught discipline and right priorities from the beginning and we should be right examples for them to follow, fashioned by God’s commandments.

Once the flesh takes hold, and the venomous poison of the serpent bite injected and circulating into the mind, there is little hope of a cure: The world celebrates; it has claimed another victim!

Regardless of man’s antipathy towards God’s teaching of what His Wisdom proves as the right way of living to receive the blessing of His goodness; throughout the 6000 years of man’s existence he has been hostile to God’s word as it condemns the ungodlinesss of man’s natural thoughts and ways.

God, His Word, His prophets, Christ Jesus His Son, the Apostles have all been despised and rejected; man has preferred to believe fables rather than the Truth, albeit to his own rejection and destruction. “Prophecy not unto us right thigns speak unto us smooth things, prophesy deceites” (Isa. 30:10).

God, His word and glory endureth for ever: but “all flesh is as grass and all the glory of man is as the flower of grass, the grass withereth and the flower thereof falleth away.”

Children should be taught the right ways of God from an early age that they might grow up with a true hope and prepared to face any trials or tribulations which may beset them, with the benefit of the wisdom and word of God: fact, not fiction.

“Tell ye your children of it and let your children tell their children, and their children another generation” (Joel 1:3).

Denying the false Santa Claus will not harm them, but denying the truth of God certainly will.

Gordon Royal

NOTE:

We contend that the Bible teaches that “every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, and cometh down from the Father of Lights …” (Jas. 1:17). To teach that gifts come from Father Christmas instead is to displace Yahweh as provider, and is therefore a form of idolatry. –

CAM