In Which I Believe in Magic (Sort Of)

When I was a naive, young college student and a relatively new Christian believer, I would have discussions with my Christian friends about whether or not, presuming we became parents in the future, we would introduce Santa and the Easter Bunny. Somehow the Tooth Fairy never came up. The debate was over whether, in introducing mythical gift givers and thus potentially focusing on gifts during these holidays, we would obscure the celebrations of the birth and resurrection of Jesus, respectively. We also feared that, when eventually our children discovered that Santa and the Easter Bunny were make believe they would be tempted to relegate Jesus to that realm as well.

Now, as a 40-something mother, I have not only embraced Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny (not to mention the Tooth Fairy), I have added an additional mythical gift giver to the assortment plus two holiday visitors.. Squirrelboy no longer believes in mythical gift givers, but he believed in Santa pretty firmly through Christmas of 4th grade, longer than many of his peers. Just before Christmas of his 5th grade year he told me that he believed we (Mr. Engineer and I) were Santa Claus, and probably the Easter Bunny too. I confirmed it, and recruited him to help keep the magic alive for his sister, who was 4 at the time. For the record, he never even brought up the question of whether Jesus was part of the make believe children's magic.

Christian families make different decisions about  mythical gift givers, and I don't mean to malign those who have prayerfully chosen not to introduce them. However, I have personally found that immersing children in a world of magic from an early age can be spiritually beneficial. It's pretty much impossible to explain the mystery of the Trinity to a three year old. Heck, it can be difficult for a 43 year old to understand the idea that God is simultaneously one God and three persons. However, it's not hard for a three year old to embrace the mystery of a kind man who travels around the world delivering presents on Christmas Eve.

I believe that introducing children to magic and mystery at an early age can ultimately be a really good thing for their spiritual lives. The fact is, the Gospel contains a lot of mysteries. Somehow the all-powerful creator of the universe mystically impregnated a young woman without the benefit of intercourse or reproductive technology and was born on earth as a baby who grew into a man who was 100% human and simultaneously 100% divine. Then that God-man purposely got himself executed in order to serve the punishment for sin for all of humanity, remained dead for a few days, and then rose from the dead, thus defeating death.

If you have been raised to believe that only what you can see and touch is real, frankly, that story sounds incredibly stupid and unbelievable. In the western world, however, even many Christians live as if only what we can see and touch is real. Introducing my children to a magical world conditions their hearts and minds to accept the unbelievable. As they've grown older and begun to ask their own questions about our faith, they have accepted that a lot of it is hard to understand and doesn't always make practical sense. I don't believe this would have worked as well if they had not been raised in the atmosphere in which we have raised them.

I should add that we have never focused on presents as the main reason for Christmas or Easter. We give presents to each other to celebrate the gift of Jesus. Santa also brings presents to celebrate the gift of Jesus, and all he does is fill the stocking and leave a few small gifts or one medium sized gift. The Easter Bunny brings candy and a few small gifts to celebrate Jesus' resurrection. Despite my misgivings pre-parenthood, I have never found it difficult to focus on Jesus and blend in mythical gift givers.

Because two holiday gift-givers weren't enough, we also added the Candy Fairy. She comes after Halloween and Easter and trades any candy the kids don't want for a small toy or some cash. We introduced this the first Easter after Kittygirl's diabetes diagnosis. She had gotten a lot of candy at a plethora of Easter Egg hunts, and I wasn't ready to deal with figuring out how to dole out the candy fairly and dose insulin for it. So I told her that I'd heard that, if she wanted to save just a little bit of her candy and leave the rest out, there was a Candy Fairy who would take it and leave a toy. She was all in, and to my surprise, so was her brother. The Candy Fairy came back for Halloween and has been a twice-yearly feature in our house ever since.

Finally, our family hosts both an Elf on the Shelf named and a Shepherd during Advent.

We don't focus on the elf telling Santa whether the kids have been good or bad. Santa, in our family mythology, gives gifts to celebrate the birth of Jesus, not gift dependent upon behavior. However, he observes our Advent practices and reports Christmas wishes to Santa. Our little Shepherd boy spends Advent searching for Baby Jesus and finds him (in plush version) on Christmas morning. He then stays with us for the twelves days of Christmas reminding us to keep celebrating. The shepherd also comes back a few weeks before Easter to remind us of the Easter story.

Even many people who don't embrace any spiritual belief point to the Christmas season as a magical time. There's no reason that embracing that magic has to harm your child's budding faith. On the contrary, it can help it blossom.