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.

In Which I Celebrate the New Year

Did you know that yesterday was New Year's Day? No, I haven't gotten several weeks ahead of myself. No, I don't belong to some little known culture that follows an alternate calendar. That is, unless you consider Christianity a little known culture. Yesterday was the first Sunday of Advent, which begins the Christian liturgical year (sometimes called the church year). Weirdly, this is not super well known in the evangelical protestant world.

I was actually introduced to the church year by helping my mother teach preschoolers at her church when I was in high school. Her church is hit or miss when it comes to following the pattern of the church year in the regular worship service, but, in the realm of children's worship, they were great at teaching children about the wheel of the church year. Incidentally, that's also where I learned the Doxology, and I still do a toned down version of the motions we taught the kids every week in church :).

As an adult I settled into a United Methodist church. UMC churches are a mixed bag in a lot of ways, especially regarding how and to what extent they observe the church year. Our church consistently observes Advent, but is hit or miss on acknowledging the whole calendar.

I'm thankful the church is pretty good at observing Advent, because I really love this season. It's such a beautiful way to get your heart and life ready for Christmas. That said, I really like a lot of aspects of the secular American Christmas season as well and I'm not an Advent purist.

My observance of Advent outside of church began when Squirrelboy was a baby. We started buying Advent calendars with those little doors with a small piece of chocolate behind each door. We'd open a door each day, someone would eat the little piece of chocolate, we'd read the Bible verse behind the door and that was it.

Sometime when Squirrelboy was in preschool (I don't remember the year) a friend who knew I was looking for more liturgy in my life sent us a metal Advent wreath along with a set of candles. That wreath was what really pushed us into doing more than eating a piece of chocolate and reading a verse.

We eventually also added a reusable wooden Advent calendar, which has been filled with a variety of things from small toys to candy to pieces of a Lego set that's progressively built during Advent. This year, in case you're curious, the kids had no interest in Lego sets or little toys so each door hides some quarters and two Hershey kisses.

Here's a sidenote in case anyone whose child is newly diagnosed with type 1 diabetes finds my blog and reads this post.  Yes, it really is okay for kids with diabetes to eat regular chocolate. In fact, some newly diagnosed people can eat snacks anywhere from 5g-15g carbs without insulin (that's something you need to consult your endo about), in which case they wouldn't even require insulin for a little piece of chocolate. Kittygirl get insulin even for one Hershey Kiss, but she still eats them.

Our Advent setup includes the wreath and calendar mentioned, usually some kind of paper activity provided by our church's children's ministry (that's the paper tree and stickers you see), a regular or storybook Bible, the brochure that came with the wreath suggesting prayers for each week of Advent, and an Advent/Christmas related fiction book that we've chosen to read from every day. The past several years we've been reading through a variety of Santa Claus origin stories. This year's offering is Kringle by Tony Abbott. I fell in love with this book years ago and highly recommend it. It's a Santa Claus origin story told as an epic fantasy featuring shoe-making elves, weather-controlling goblins, Saxon pirates, and even a monk.

Yes, you correctly intuited from the above information that we're devout Christians, we observe Advent, and we tell our kids about Santa Claus. Long story short, I don't think believing in Santa during your childhood and following Jesus for the rest of your life need to be mutually exclusive. In fact, I believe that embracing the mystery of a mythical gift giver can give kids a leg up in understanding and embracing the mystery of the gospel when they're ready to understand it. That deserves its own post, so I'll just leave it there as a tease.

Also pictured is our Advent/Christmas Shepherd. His name is Isaiah John. He's basically a Christian version of The Elf on the Shelf. Instead of checking up on your behavior and reporting your Christmas wishes back to Santa, Isaiah John spends Advent searching for the Baby Jesus and reminds us to prepare to celebrate His birth. On Christmas morning he finds a little plush Baby Jesus. He sticks around for the twelve days of Christmas to remind us to keep celebrating.

Because we embrace contradictions, we also have an Elf on the Shelf. I'm not, however, one of those crazy Pinterest elf moms. If you're a crazy Pinterest elf mom and devising amazing stunts and props for your elf gives you joy, I say forge ahead. If it gives you a headache, you have my permission to stop, for what it's worth. All that Sam (our elf) does is move from place to place in the house each day and deliver letters to Santa. The kids still love him.

We have a pretty crazy schedule, and it gets a little crazier in the month of December because we've had a kid dancing the Nutcracker for the past ten years. I love that Advent gives us an excuse to settle down together every (or almost every) evening and reflect on what the holiday we're preparing the celebrate really means.

If you've never celebrated Advent with your kids, I highly recommend starting it.  You don't need a fancy wreath or a refillable calendar like we have, though those are nice. If all you do is buy a chocolate filled calendar from the store, read a Christmas picture book, and say a prayer, you've made a great start. You can fill in more of the things we use as the years go by, or you can learn about the various traditions and adopt the ones that work best for your family.

Here are some end notes specifically for the types of families who might be reading this. As I said above, it really is okay for a kid with diabetes to eat chocolate. However, if that stresses you out, it's also okay to forgo that aspect. You can use little toys of some kind, put a new special ornament on the tree each day, create a felt nativity scene to fill in little by little, or whatever else works best for your family. Some families like to take turns doing the reading. If this is impossible for your dyslexic or stressful, you can assign him or her a different special role: maybe lighting the candle(s) every day. Finally, if you hyperactive ADHDer can't sit still for multiple readings, just adapt it to whatever is best for them. Read just one Bible verse and a super short picture book. Or read as much as you want but encourage your kid to do something active yet not disruptive while it's happening. You don't all have to be sitting in a circle looking raptly at the reader.

Now, of course, if you belong to another religion and don't celebrate Christian or you aren't religious and you celebrate the secular version of Christmas, Advent doesn't apply to you. However, if you still want to have 24 pieces of chocolate during the month of December no one is stopping you :). If you identify as a Christian of any type and have never paid much attention to Advent, though, I highly recommend digging into what this season has to offer. Our culture wants us to jump straight into Christmas on November 1st at the absolute latest. Advent offers us a chance to slow down, step back, and reflect on what it means that the creator of the universe chose to be born as a human baby in order to bring about our salvation.

In Which Our Challenges Are NOT a Gift from God (And Not a Curse Either)

Sometimes it's interesting being a Christian in the diabetes community. Because diabetes can happen to anyone, there are, not surprisingly, parents from all walks of life that belong to diabetes parent Facebook groups. However, I always find myself paying particular attention to people who talk about the Christian faith in their posts and/or comments. Christians who post in these groups frequently fall into one of two camps. Camp 1 is what I like to call the Angry Doubter camp. These people are on the verge of losing their faith due to their child's diagnosis. They simply can't believe that a loving God would allow their child to get such a horrible disease and, therefore, God either doesn't exist or is a massive jerk who is not worthy of their worship. Camp 2 might be called the Divine Gift camp. They believe that there is a divine purpose behind their child's diagnosis, and that God gave diabetes to their particular child at this particular time to fulfill a particular purpose. Sometimes they even think they know what that purpose is. Which camp do I belong to? Neither, and in fact I find both equally troubling and weirdly similar in that they both begin with a flawed view of God and of God's purposes in the world. Let me tell you why.

The Angry Doubters seem to be completely unaware of the fact that, the moment before their child was diagnosed with diabetes, the world was full of suffering and evil. Somehow it didn't shake their faith the least little bit that there are girls being sold into sexual slavery, boys being trained as soldiers, storms destroying whole villages, or any of the other myriad tragedies and evils that happen in our fallen world every day. Yet the fact that their child was diagnosed with a chronic autoimmune condition with which many people have lived happily and successfully for decades and for which new and better treatments are in near constant development is simply too much for their faith to overcome. Have they been taught that God protects believers and will never let anything bad happen to them? If so, they've been taught wrong. The lives of the apostles and the martyrs of the early church should be enough to make it clear that God does not protect His children from all harm. However, since American Christianity is all too often found in an ahistorical vacuum, they might be unaware of this example. I can have a rational discussion with someone who wants to argue against the goodness or the existence of God based on the evil in the world. However, if your reason for leaving your faith is that that evil touched your own family, it was likely never much of a faith at all.

People in the Divine Gift camp, I think, make the opposite mistake.This is where my Calvinist friends are going to take issue with me. I don't think God looked down at my daughter, or any other person, and thought, "I'll give this one type 1 diabetes. It will be an incredible gift and she'll accomplish great things because of it." I also don't think God looks down on particular parents to be and determines that they are the best possible people to "bless" with a child with special needs of any kind. If we attribute these things as direct actions of God, where do we stop? Did God also give diabetes to the child of the mother in the Angry Doubter camp who has now abandoned whatever faith she had since her child's diagnosis? Did God give diabetes to the young adult who couldn't afford his insulin after going off his parents' insurance and died a month later? Is God pulling the trigger of every gun that kills an unarmed young Black man (or anyone at all)? Is God behind the wheel of every car that causes a fatal accident? Following along this track can lead to a very dangerous view of God.

Now, before you start preparing the fire to burn me at the stake as a heretic, listen to what I'm not saying. I'm not saying that it's not okay to be angry with God because your child has an incurable disease or for any other reason. You do not want to know how often I have raged at God for this reason and others. I find it incredibly unjust at times that our family was given the challenges we were given while other families seem to waltz through life with no serious problems. However, in the end, God is big enough to listen to my angry tirades and continue to be with me. In the end, I believe that God weeps with us over own tragedies and the tragedies of the world (big or small) and is with us when we're ready to get back up and move forward in this messy world. Someday God will bring a new heaven and a new earth. Kittygirl will have a new, perfect body. She will be able to feast at the heavenly banquet table without counting a single carb. In the meantime, God will be with her, with me, and with anyone else who calls on Him. I'm also not saying that God doesn't, at times, use our challenges to bless us and to bring glory to Himself. Our family has met some amazing people because of diabetes. It has made us stronger and made us more observant, conscientious parents. However, when it comes down to it, we could have learned the lessons we've learned in different ways and at different times if not for diabetes. We have allowed God to work in our lives through these challenges, but that doesn't mean we believe He ordained this particular set of challenges for us. It just means He's strong enough to bring redemption through them.