Catechizing with Christmas

How our family has catechized while celebrating the birth of Christ

A reader of the previous post asked me how I handle the question of Santa and Christmas in our family, and since I had planned to do a post on Christmas gifts eventually, I thought I would give an extended answer here. Again, I will allow anyone to post reactions or questions in the comments, instead of just paying subscribers. But only subscribers can access the special gift buried in this post. Happy hunting! 

So I am going to speak of toys, specifically regarding Christmas, since this is one of the few times of the year that most parents must think about toys, and I’ll explain how they work into our family’s celebration of the Advent and Christmas seasons. This is the fruit of our contemplation—I encourage all parents to do a similar mental exercise, but not to worry if your answers differ significantly from ours. The glory of the Catholic Church is in her variety! 

First of all, as parents I believe we must ask ourselves: what is the meaning and purpose of Christmas in the life of a young child? Why is celebrating Christmas at all important, and what lack will not celebrating Christmas introduce into the life of the young child?  

Considering this celebration, and in particular comparing it to the greater feast of Easter, I believe a few conclusions will surface: 

1. Christmas is about the generosity and graciousness of God in giving us His Son. There is an intrinsic connection liturgically between these two greatest feasts which our English term makes obvious: we are to celebrate Christmas with a MASS. A MASS is a re-presenting of Christ’s redemptive death on Calvary and His opening the gates of heaven at Easter: His death and resurrection are celebrated in the very liturgy of Christmas.  He came down here to die and to conquer death. This is the message of Easter, so to speak, embedded in the heart of Christmas.

2. But when Christ the Lord God came, He did not come Aslan-like, as a lion Savior—He came as a helpless infant into the cold of a manger which was the only cradle humanity deigned to offer Him. He came vulnerably and in sorrow—but despite this brought about JOY. The hosts of heaven, infinitely more impressed at the condescension—the literal coming-down-to-our-level—of the Creator—bade the shepherds to use their physical bodies—their eyes, their legs, their hands—to go and do what these holy spirits could not do: go and behold Him with their own human eyes, to kneel before His manger, to even touch His Infant hand. And of course the shepherds of Bethlehem went and saw and touched and knelt, and were filled with an evangelical joy that rang throughout the centuries. The message of Christmas is unexpected surprise and joy!

3. Let me state this in fewer and better words, paraphrasing the genius of Mary Reed Newland: “We don’t withhold gifts from our children at Christmas if they’ve been bad. God did not send Baby Jesus to us because we had been good. In fact, He sent Him to us because we hadn’t been good.”

Thus, the message of Christmas is the generosity of God with we people who DO NOT DESERVE IT. There is nothing we could do, no heroic penances nor perfect performance of chores, no flawless adherence to the Catholic faith that could EVER make us worthy of receiving Baby Jesus at Christmas. 

For this reason, I find the secular message of Santa Claus’s lists of naughty and nice children to not be particularly helpful (although I certainly enjoy the antics of Bill Watterson’s Calvin and Hobbes as poor secularist Calvinistic Calvin tries to swindle his way into gifts year after year). We’re not doctrinaire about say, never playing the song “Santa Claus is coming to Town” for our children. But when our children were very small, we tried hard to build a solid foundation of catechetical understanding of Christmas. Thus:

We told our children that Baby Jesus is the reason for Christmas, not Santa, and that it is He, not Santa, Who will bring them gifts. Santa, is of course, His helper, but Santa lives in Heaven and has angels to help him, not elves. One thing that made this easier was Tomie de Paola’s delightful book Country Angel Christmas, which happened to be one of the first books I read my oldest son as a toddler: the story itself is negligible, but the lovely simple images of St. Nicholas and the angels and their colorful heavenly farmscape are inspired!

And then as parents we strove on Christmas day to surprise our children with gifts they did not merit. We strove to give them many reasons to rejoice on Christmas—from dazzling them with pretty dresses and new suits to playing glorious music to revealing a towering lighted Christmas tree with gifts—whatever we could manage and cobble together with the help of our older children who were let in on the secret as they aged. The gift is the surprise, and it is worth giving.

Once our young children were clear on the centrality of the coming of Baby Jesus, we were able to fold in the secular stories of Santa Claus with a little more levity. Is Rudolf the Reindeer in heaven? Well, maybe! There are many delightful things in heaven!  But emphasizing the reality of Baby Jesus and the subsequent historicity of St. Nicholas helped set a good foundation of certainty of belief among our children. So there was never any need to “lie” about the reality of Santa Claus. 

“Making Room” during Advent

Instead of a naughty-nice list, we have substituted or introduced the perennial Christian custom of charity during Advent. In December, I try to gather the children at some point and take inventory of their clothing and toys and possessions. What do we have that we can give away? Do we have extra we can give to the poor? Is there a friend or family member who would need or enjoy what we have better than us?  This is a difficult practice, but rewarding. It is so hard to give away something you truly love—and it is even harder for me as a parent to watch them give away a toy I enjoyed giving them! But we remind ourselves that we are storing up treasure in heaven by giving away our things and making more room for Baby Jesus. I’m not saying this is easy, but it is worth it. It has been made somewhat easier by my husband demanding it: along the lines of, “If we can’t get rid of some of these toys, there is no way we are buying more!” 

And of course there are other good works—sometimes we have done the practice of filling baby Jesus’ empty cradle with straw to remind ourselves to pray and be kind to each other. Again, the mantra: make room for Baby Jesus! He is coming! 

From a logistical point of view—as well as a financial one—I begin gathering and buying gifts by the Fall and stashing them till Christmas. My personal goal is to have all presents or the materials for making presents bought before the Feast of Christ the King. This is because we invariably are short on money in December, and also because I as a parent need to slow down during Advent in order to truly enter into the season. Shopping takes me away from the home, and so much of Christmas preparation should happen in the home.

From my husband’s family, I learned the wonderful practice of trying to make rather than buy gifts for the children. I can sew, craft, sculpt, and paint, so this is easier for me, perhaps—but nearly all of us can prepare something with homemade touches, even if it’s just arranging a special gift basket or personalizing or up-cycling something. My brother-in-law recently told me that his parents taught him that when you make a gift for someone, you are able to give them not just an object, but something of yourself, and that communicates love, especially to a child. 

I love this handmade dollar-and-thrift store compiled gift one daughter made for her sister.

I also try to prepare the expectations of my children by limiting toy catalogs: we receive so many, and when I sort the mail, I promptly throw out the ones that don’t represent the kind of gifts I want them to have. Since when my children were young I was able to give them many homemade gifts, I was fortunate to find catalogs that offered fair-trade handmade gifts for them to wish over. Here’s one of our favorites.

The Reality and Necessity of Santa Claus

Shortly after Advent begins, we have St. Nicholas Day, complete with a puppet show, a tradition of my in-laws, also gotten from The Year and Our Children (there’s another version in a booklet from the Messy Family Project which is free with any donation.) His feast’s proximity to Christmas seems to be how he became associated with Christmas gift-giving. Some have acidly asked why a wonder-worker, exorcist, and serious champion of the orthodox faith like Nicholas of Myra became associated with children’s wishes, toys, and sweets. I have always thought—especially if the traditional stories are true—that a seasoned bishop who had to endure the sight of so many suffering and abused children while on earth—girls threatened with prostitution and boys with sadistic slaughter—might very well freely choose to spend his heaven as the one who preserves the innocence of children and hears their heartfelt prayers. This has always made so much sense to me, and I don’t downgrade Santa’s spiritual power even if it is buried or disguised with so much sentiment and commercialism. As others have admitted grudgingly, there is a magic about “Holy Klaus” that not even a deluge of erroneous holiday movies and songs and greeting cards can completely drown.

Some parents have questioned whether or not parents should keep up the charade of Santa at all: why not tell the children openly that Mommy and Daddy are the good giver of gifts in the name of Christ, and that it is to their parents, not Santa, that their temporal Christmas happiness is owed? I have heard some well-meaning but perhaps too serious Christian parents make this argument.

I remember Dennis Prager, the Jewish talk show host, arguing with a fundamentalist caller that the myth of Santa Claus belongs in Christmas because it makes the Christian tradition of Christmas magical for children, and if we as religious people hope that our children will keep our religious customs, those customs must be FUN as well as meaningful.  As Prager explained, customs like Santa Claus, while not strictly doctrinal, create memories and emotional anchor points for children as they grow which keep them returning to those customs and passing them on, even when they are seized by doubts or struggling with indifference to their childhood faith.

I remember another Catholic man explaining to me why the Amish, with their incredibly onerous way of life, are able to “keep” so many of their children in their lifestyle. Their young adults discover when they leave the fold for their required immersion in modern life that, despite the cars and central heating and cell phones the outside world offers them, it’s just far more fun to be Amish. So most of them inevitably return to become covenanted members of their churches. 

Anyone who is serious about Culture Recovery needs to bear this in mind. If our faith makes us joyless, perpetually serious or worse, angry, why in the world should our kids join it? If our own Catholic faith does not make us infectiously joyful, why would our teens and young adults want to remain Catholic when they have the choice to leave?

So by all means, embrace the fun of Christmas and build up a culture of that in your home: and the “game” of Santa mysteriously bringing gifts is part of that fun. But here is another argument, made by a Catholic couple whose name escapes me but whose magazine article I well remember:

For most of the year, parents do things for their children openly, things for which they must receive their children’s thanks, since children must be led to honor their parents. Parents feed, clothe, listen to, play with, clean, educate, and do so much more for their children, and children owe them an unpayable debt of honor for that. This is all well and good, but it does mostly prevent good parents from exercising the Gospel command: “When you give, do not let your left hand know what your right is doing, that your Heavenly Father Who sees what is done in secret may reward you.” 

Santa Claus enables parents to do just that: to bring joy to their children and get no thanks in return. And this is thrilling and wonderful and exciting to see. There are few greater happinesses I have experienced as a parent than watching my children, especially the young ones, open gifts that have magically dropped from the Christmas tree. As Daria Sockey once wrote, “My Christmas gift is to watch my children open their gifts.”  Believe me, it’s enough. And if the gifts come from Baby Jesus via Santa, they must thank Jesus—or at least not complain if the gift is not exactly what that child wanted (win/win, as far as I’m concerned). 

O Tannenbaum!

Now let me speak of the Christmas tree. As you may know, the practices of American Christmas are a mishmash collected from cultures worldwide: in an attempt to capture the fun of every Catholic custom and meld it with a Protestant/secular worldview, Americans have the Nordic St. Nicholas, the Christmas dinner feast of the British, and the Tannenbaum of the Germans. That last, the Christmas tree, is almost impossible to argue against: everyone wants some version of it, regardless of any sort of faith or environmental concerns (it’s an important components of sustainable agriculture).  We Americans love the natural beauty of our continent, and bringing a large specimen of it—a stately evergreen—inside the home for a month is nearly irresistible, regardless of needed watering or dropping needles. In their justification of what might be an otherwise absurd practice—especially for those in Southern climates or with wall-to-wall carpeting—Christmas tree apologists have offered elaborate explanations for their origins involving tree worship, Yule logs, the Winter Solstice, “touching grass”—the list of reasons for the Christmas tree goes on and on.  

It is true that although evergreens are rivaled only by poinsettias in their ubiquity in Catholic churches at Christmas, they are not mentioned in Scripture, Catholic liturgy, or Sacred Tradition. Because of this, a sliver minority of Catholics, following Protestants concerned about pagan customs, eschew these decorated trees. They are forgetting that even if it was a pagan custom, all that is necessary is for Catholics to baptize it.  

But here is one rationale for the Christmas tree that I have found personally compelling and even catechetical.  I stumbled across it—or at any rate I remembered it—because of my interest in theater, particularly the mostly-lost theater of the Middle Ages, the secondary source of Western drama.  Our theatrical tradition is closely tied to the Catholic liturgy—even the most jaded secular sources must admit this—and one huge element of the para-liturgical customs were the mystery plays: dramatic representations of salvation history. Some theatrical elements of these plays were so powerful in Western imagination that they still survive today—the image of the devil with a pitchfork, for example. One element of these plays was the portrayal of the Garden of Eden, and it is thought (since evidence for the production of these plays was systematically destroyed by the government of Queen Elizabeth I and is now so fragmentary) it invariably centered on the image of the Tree of Life.

We always tend to forget that there were two trees in the garden: the Tree of Life, full of good and life-giving fruit of which the Man and Woman were invited to eat their full, and the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, which was forbidden to them by the command of God. The fruit of this tree was not immediately compelling to the eye—Jewish tradition says it resembled a fig—and it was not until Eve, at the invitation of the serpent looked at it closely that she apparently became attracted to it. But the fruit of the Tree of Life was said by tradition to be beautiful to behold—artistic custom makes its fruit apples of gold, the same sort of elusive golden apples that reoccur in other myths. It was to stop man from eating from the Tree of Life that God barred Adam and Eve from the Garden. Because sin coupled with endless life is a curse, not a blessing.

Medieval print of the Tree of Life available on Etsy

That was how matters stood—until Christmas. At Christmas, Christ appeared, in order to be our new Tree of Life: He was that golden and sweet-smelling fruit, fragrant and delightful. This is one reason artists invariably couple Him with wood—from the wood of the manger to the wood of the Cross He hung upon, which became the salvation of the world. He IS the Tree of Life! The Scripture proclaims in the final Book of Revelation, “To him who overcomes, I will give to eat from the Tree of Life which is in the midst of the Paradise of God.” (Rev. 2:7) It is thought that when these mystery plays were presented at Christmas time, the Tree of Life had to be an evergreen, the only green tree easily available to Europeans in December. And of course it was adorned with golden apples and crowned with lights.

Some images cannot be unseen, cannot be forgotten, no matter now much propaganda and government censorship they are subjected to. When the Puritans crushed Christmas in England, the Tree of Life went underground, until it reappeared when a later British sovereign married a German prince, and he brought the Christmas tree into English culture. The Tree of Life reasserted itself and now refuses to leave.

So our family absolutely must have a Christmas tree in our home. As per my husband’s family custom, we bring it in on the Fourth Sunday of Advent, and set it up and put on the lights but leave them unplugged. On Christmas Eve when the family is in bed, a team of Christmas angels and elves (we baptized the concept of Christmas elves in our household) adorn it with silver and gold and all manner of good things, including candy canes and bags of sweets, and pile gifts around its base, like windfall fruits in an orchard, then turn on the lights for the finishing glow.  For the Christmas tree is a representation of the Tree of Life, Christ Himself, Who “descended from heaven to give gifts to men.” (Eph. 4:8) Sometimes an image of Baby Jesus Himself is there for the family to greet and cuddle in the morn.

Christmas Day in the Morning

We don’t open gifts immediately on Christmas: children are allowed to rush for and take down their stockings and look at their Christmas gifts, but we don’t open them yet. This is because my parents introduced to our family the custom of attending Christmas Mass in the Morning before any presents are opened. They also had a festive breakfast before gifts as well. I personally like this, because it fills up the day nicely. Even today our family follows that custom: morning Mass, usually at 8:30, brunch afterwards, invariably featuring what our family has dubbed a proper Narnian breakfast, like the one the dwarves served Shasta in The Horse and His Boy: fried potatoes, mushrooms, and eggs, together with link sausage, sometimes from our own homestead. Usually, like many families we have to parcel out the breakfast meat: only two sausages per person, one piece of bacon—but on Christmas, in the catechetical spirit of foolish generosity, we make triple the amount and everyone gets as much as they please. 

Christmas brunch: “Narnian home fries,” fruit salad, and plenty of meat!

The lack of sweets at breakfast is deliberate: we anticipate our children will have their full of candy and hot chocolate and cookies and Christmas cake, so Christmas breakfast is hearty and filling and mostly sugar-free.   

Another item we normally must limit is fresh fruit—so necessary a luxury, but often so expensive. The day before Christmas, I take my children to the store and proclaim, “Pick any fruit you want!” So they pile the cart with their favorites: grapes in every color, apples, clementines, berries, mangoes, pineapple—and are willing to try new interesting items like pomegranate and star fruit, which have blander tastes but can make our breakfast fruit salad echo a Christmas tree with shining red fruit jewels and pale yellow-green stars on top. Why not bring the bounty of God-made nature to our feast breakfast, since the Lord is so generous with our country? 

Fortified with fruit and breakfast, we rise from the table, wash and put away the Christmas dishes and at long last gather again around the Christmas tree to sing together and welcome Baby Jesus. Then at last—after the necessary penance of a Christmas photo for Grandma—we sit down to open gifts. One by one, beginning with the youngest, as is only fitting on Christmas, we pick out a gift, and open it while everyone else watches.

My husband and I settled on the custom of three gifts per child, since Baby Jesus Himself received only three—but those gifts were precious indeed!—gold, frankincense, and myrrh. (PS: mom’s rule is that anything that can fit in a stocking doesn’t count as one of the three gifts.)  So we try to pick gifts that are more than just more “plastic junk.” We try to spring for something weighty and royal whenever possible: not the paperback edition but the specialty hardcover. Not the garage sale pickup, but the brand new sweater. Not the knockoff, but the designer brand (although, because we are poor, these are usually thrift store finds). Not everything is affordable to us, but we shop with our guardian angels’ help, and they have over the years led us to surprising sales and unexpected finds in the most out of the way places—including having friends, co-workers, and even strangers randomly offer us for free just what we were looking for.  These Christmas gifts are not necessarily what we ask for, nor what we deserve, but what comes to us by the bounty of God, Who has the whole world to give to His children.  

We almost always buy a book for everyone, usually a fairy or classic tale beautifully illustrated for their personal library. The older they get, the more my children appreciate the latter. No one is really too old for lovely picture books in this visual age. And there’s usually something useful and needed, and then there is a surprise, if at all possible. My sister’s family follows a similar motto to make their gifts precious: something you want, something you need, something to wear, something to read. 

Regardless of the gift selection, I do think it is important that there are very few presents per person. We do live in such a glut of materialism, and in my experience, toddlers can’t adequately comprehend more than three gifts. They get overwhelmed, check out, or just tear off the paper (the best part), glance at it, and then move on to the next…  I really do think three (or four) is about the best number. And since there are so many of us, there still is a nice pile beneath the tree. There are usually about three family gifts too: a storybook, a movie, or a new board game. After gifts are over, everyone settles down to relax, nap, or enjoy their gifts. For us, Christmas dinner is leisurely and accompanied by family visits or card games. 

Three Kings’ Day

During the Twelveday, the Twelve Days of Christmas, we make every effort to keep the celebration going: we try to take off of work as much as possible, we invite friends we otherwise rarely see over for cookies and cocoa or a glass of wine with appetizers, we go caroling, we visit family, we read Christmas stories and watch Christmas movies. Since we give up Christmas carols during Advent, we play those non-stop, with my husband enjoying vintage records on a turntable. Sometimes we have been able to visit nursing homes (mostly pre-COVID) and in our experience, the residents are delighted to have visitors and carols post-Christmas Day. 

We do all we can to keep the Twelveday holy—set apart—since the Church herself is still celebrating, at least till the Octave, depending on your rite. The new Roman rite may end Christmas at the Baptism of Our Lord, but in our family, we keep all twelve days of Christmas as much as our schedules and commitments allow, and celebrate either the Feast of the Epiphany or Three Kings’ Day, depending on which falls on the twelfth night of Christmas.  Speaking of Twelfth Night, we usually add this movie or our own play version to our category of Christmas viewing.  

When we receive more than three gifts for our children, we save those gifts for the Three Kings to bring the final day of Great Christmas to a close (“Little Christmas” goes on till February 2 in our home). On the morning of January 6, the family finds another pile of gifts. Here go all the garage-sale finds, the gifts from grandparents and godparents, and sometimes the gift hoped-for but not received on Christmas Day. We warn our children that the Three Kings are in a hurry: they are on the run from Herod, so sometimes they don’t make sure the gifts are equal in number for each child. Sometimes they wrap them sloppily, sometimes they scatter straw, but because God is good, there is a last round of miracle presents beneath the tree… and so there are more festivities. Sometimes we have done a raucous Three Kings Play with our own embellishments, but in the evening we have a family procession around the house and a blessing with the statues of the Three Kings.

That is how we have grown into managing gifts and Christmas…. Now please be warned that all this muchness did not come to us at once. Back when we were an overwhelmed toddler-heavy family, and mom and dad had to both play Santa and Kings, things were not always so glorious and certainly not picture perfect. And some years we have been so poor that we paid for Christmas breakfast and presents with gift cards from our parish or from kind strangers. (One year, the teachers at our son’s public school surprised us with a huge sackful of brand-new toys and clothing—may God bless them and remember them!) But our Father God has provided, and as is the message of Christmas itself, we are so grateful for His overwhelming, gratuitous, generous blessings.

So as parents are the first teachers of the faith to their children, I would urge upon you the catechetical potential in the celebration of Christmas, and to act upon it. There are few lessons so productive to teach our children, and certainly few more fun!

Happy ruminating, and blessed Advent!

PS: Since this is part of my Christmas series, I’m allowing anyone to comment. Or if you enjoy, please share, or consider a paid subscription.