How the Myth of Santa Can Lead Us to the Truth of Jesus

There is something magical about this time of year. I don’t know if it’s the anticipation or the busyness, but I’ve never quite lost that sense of wonder.

As someone who didn’t grow up celebrating Santa Claus, I’ve always been envious of the mystique surrounding the myth. The innocent belief of worthiness and assurance that genuine desire is enough.

The child who has barely enough who knows his parents cannot fulfill his secret wishes but believes that a higher power can. The belief in Santa Claus taps into our human need to be loved in a way that feels larger than ourselves. While I have no actual problem with pretending Santa Claus with children (though full disclosure, it’s not something we do with our family) the real reason for Christmas is even more exciting.

No matter how bad or good we have been, none of us can make it onto God’s nice list. Because that list has one person’s name on it, Jesus. But Jesus wrote the rest of us, not on a nice list to get us presents but in a book of life that gives us eternity. Those names written in his blood, that can never be removed.

When I see the light in the eyes of small children as they hope for their deepest wishes on Christmas Eve, I am reminded of the yearnings of my own heart.
To be loved, to belong, to be found. Christmas is built on all of these things.

God sent Jesus because of his deep, unending love for us.
Jesus became one of us, so that we could be grafted into God’s family as sons, daughters and heirs.
We are all lost, but because of a seemingly inconsequential birth, that looked like so many others over 2000 years ago, we are irrevocably found.

I am called by name not because of anything I have done but because of what has been done for me.

While there is nothing wrong with that childlike desire to be known and our deepest desires remembered by someone larger and more powerful than us, we don’t want it to stop there.

The catch is that we cannot fully receive that gift without also acknowledging the other tree he was nailed to thirty years later. Because we have not just been given a child in a manger, but a warrior deliverer and lover of our souls who fought and died for us. I don’t know about you, but that is even more appealing.

While it may seem exciting to have gifts delivered as if by magic, how much more satisfying to know we have a love we can never lose and an untapped potential placed within us to love others in a deeper and more selfless way? Those are literally the gifts that keep on giving.

I would challenge you, that every time you see a kindly man dressed in a red suit or hear a holiday jingle about Santa coming to town, remember that Jesus was born in Bethlehem but he didn’t stay there.

He doesn’t arrive just once or twice a year; putting in appearances at Christmas and Easter. He is ever present in our desperation and difficulty. He knows all of our deepest hurts, and greatest sins and loves us anyway. Like so many other things, the myth and mystique that surround Santa Claus are a mere shadow of what God has to offer us.

But it can open a door in a tender part of our soul, one where Jesus stands patiently waiting to be invited in.