Jolly Ole Saint Nicholas

We went to the Anderson Family ( Matt's Mom's side of the Family) Christmas Party and had a lovely time. Santa came and handed out presents to all the kids. Matt took these pics with his phone and they are super blurry. Matt's sister, Raegan, took pics of Victoria with Santa- but we don't have those yet. The kids had a lot of fun and enjoyed seeing Santa- even if (gasp!) they know he is not real.
Apparently, we have become the Scrooge family in the neighborhood because we teach our children about Saint Nicholas, and that he was a real man, but that Santa is just kind of a fun, fictional way to celebrate Christmas. We explain to them that Santa is not alive and that we try to focus on Christ's birth. We have explicitly instructed them not to talk to other children about Santa- that their parents will talk to them when they are ready. I have since discovered that our children have not been obedient to this counsel, which has caused some distress amongst our neighbors. Of course our children decide to inform the Bishop's children of Santa's fictional characteristics! And of course they, in turn, informed my children that Santa would be skipping our house. After thoroughly admonishing and reprimanding them, I informed them that Mommy and Daddy get their presents and we would never skip our children!
Matt and I were both brought up this way and we feel very confident in our choice- just in case you were ready to get all up in arms about it and come put a baa humbug sign on my door! We love Christmas, we celebrate Christmas- we just don't believe in Santa! We have a couple of reasons for our choice:
1. We want to focus on Christ at Christmas, and although Santa is a "good" man, we feel that he takes the focus away from Jesus Christ, our Savior.
2. We were concerned that if we taught our children that Santa is a real all-seeing individual, is it possible that when they discover that Santa is not real, they may doubt the reality of God? This happened to some aquaintences of ours and we wanted to emphasize the reality of Christ and the fiction of Santa, the Easter Bunny, the Tooth Fairy and all his magical friends from the very beginning.
3. We felt, personally, that we would be dishonest by teaching our children that Santa is real. Please do not feel that we sit at home judging you as liars if you choose otherwise! We just weren't comfortable with it.
4. This isn't really a reason, just an additional detail: We still encourage all the excitement, surprise and joy that comes with Christmas eve and Christmas morning and our kids love it just as much!
So, if you would like to send me hate mail about Santa, go right ahead- at least now you have been informed as to our position!

Look! We even let our children sit on Santa's lap!