Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus

Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus

A century ago, a young girl named Virginia wrote to the New York Sun, seeking an answer to her question, “Is there a Santa Claus?”  Her father had told her, “If you see it in The Sun, it’s true.” And she believed him with the simple faith of a child.  Yes, it was a simpler time, when the innocence of a child was more highly respected and nurtured.  Still today, childhood can be a magical time, when truth is black and white, when trust in parents is full, and the wonders of Christmas are given life in the imaginations of children. 

Jesus himself spoke of coming to him with childlike faith (Mark 10:13-15) – a faith filled with wonder and awe, believing in the impossible, and trusting our heavenly Father above all else.  Indeed, the real wonder of Christmas is the truth that God sent his Son into the world to save sinners, and that salvation is a free gift to all who would believe.

Parents who strive to keep the true message of Christmas alive in the hearts and minds of their families face significant distractions in today’s culture.  The advance of advertising into our homes – through our plasma screens – presents a formidable challenge to the simple yet profound celebration of the birth of the Christ child.  Commercialism and materialism hammer at the door of our homes.

Indeed, in our increasingly relativistic age, where belief in anything is often suspect, keeping the innocence of children intact is a sizeable responsibility, especially at Christmas, when all things traditional and religious are under attack.  Schools and local governments, fearing legal reprisal by “purists” attempting to remove Christianity from our culture, revert to winter holiday vacations, holiday greetings, holiday parades, and secular carols and trappings.

Many retailers now cage their advertisements in multicultural, inclusive language, in hopes of offending no one, for the purpose of profit.  Best Buy ran a national Black Friday circular that invited shoppers to celebrate Thanksgiving and Eid Al-Adha, a Muslim festival of sacrifice.  The Gap, no stranger to inclusivity, ran an ad in which attractive, multicultural, skinny-jeans-clad cheerleaders shout, “Go Christmas! Go Hannukah! Go Kwanzaa! Go Solstice!...You 86 the rules, you do what just feels right," they cheer, before telling us to “do whatever [we] wannukkah” this merry holiday season.  Those who celebrate the “reason for the season” are offended, and are beginning to respond with more selective shopping.  (Focus on the Family’s Citizenlink provides shoppers the opportunity to rate merchants’ “Christmas friendliness.”)

Topping off the drive to secularize Christmas, the American Humanist Society takes its campaign promoting a “Godless Holiday” nationwide.  The group, consisting of atheists and others who “embrace reason over religion,” chose the Christmas season to run a $40,000 ad campaign on buses in Washington, D.C., New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, and San Francisco.  Placards on buses depict smiling people wearing Santa hats with the slogan, “No God?...No problem.”  The humanists, who say they are trying to reach like-minded individuals and not convert the religious, believe it is possible to be morally upright without a foundational faith in God.  (Read more in the Los Angeles Times or on CNSNews.com.)

Disparaging the cultural and religious traditions of Christmas is not the exclusive purview of merchants or the humanist society.  Both Frosty the Snowman and Santa Claus fell under attack this year. CBS drew the ire of television and media watchdogs for running a video commercial entitled, “Frosty the Inappropriate Snowman.”  The feature used clips from the iconic cartoon spliced with two network comedy series known for pushing the envelope – How I Met Your Mother and Two and a Half Men.  The video suggests that Frosty and his friends visit a strip club, discuss his “porn” collection, and boast of prior sexual encounters.  Bob Peters of Morality in Media was quoted on FOXNews.com, “Legal matters aside, it should go without saying that CBS TV ought to be ashamed of itself – using an animated Christmas season setting with young children to chat about strippers, whores, pornography, sadomasochism, sexual promiscuity, and more.” 

Adding further ammunition to the belief “nothing is sacred” anymore, homosexual activist group GLSEN (the Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network) sponsored a benefit performance of Santa Claus is Coming Out, a one-man-show “mock-u-mentary” about the outing of Santa Claus.  GLSEN, founded by homosexual Kevin Jennings, portrays itself as promoting student safety, yet nothing could be further from the truth of its graphic pro-homosexual advocacy.  Such unabashed, pro-homosexual advocacy recently earned Jennings a promotion, when President Barack Obama appointed him to head the U.S. Education Department’s Office of Safe & Drug Free Schools.

Truly, nothing in contemporary culture is sacred.  Christmas is being systematically removed from schools and communities, while one-size-fits-all inclusivity offends truth and tradition in our postmodern world.  “And that, perhaps, is the broader cultural significance of the war on Christmas. In our relativistic age, we're not expected to believe in anything. To politically correct liberals, belief is an odd eccentricity passed down by barbarians who lived in a more superstitious time.”  (Washington Times, November 27, 2009)

The New York Sun responded to the child’s inquiry with this: “Virginia, your little friends are wrong. They have been affected by the skepticism of a skeptical age. They do not believe except they see. … The most real things in the world are those that neither children nor men can see. Did you ever see fairies dancing on the lawn? Of course not, but that's no proof that they are not there. Nobody can conceive or imagine all the wonders there are unseen and unseeable in the world.” (Yes, Virginia, There is a Santa Claus)

To that we might add, yes, Virginia, there is wonder, there is Christmas and joy, there is a Christ Child, God’s gift to us.  While secularists and humanists seek to deny the evidence and reality of childlike faith, to strip childhood of its innocence and wonder, they miss the truth and the reality of faith and its impact in the lives of those around them.  “What no eye has seen, nor ear heard, nor the heart of man conceived, what God has prepared for those who love him.”  (I Cor. 2:9) 

“And the angel said to them, ‘Be not afraid; for behold, I bring you good news of a great joy which will come to all the people; for to you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, who is Christ the Lord.’”  (Luke 2:10-11)  This is the truth – something to cling to.  Teach your children well this Christmas season, for other voices of the season are shouting a secularized, anti-God version to our culture.