Well, Christmas 2015 is now behind us. Before it gets too far behind us, let’s keep this series going so that we are better prepared next year instead of the annual tradition of scrambling trying to figure out what position to take at the end of November or early December.
Here is a quick link list to the previous parts in the series:
Thanks for following this developing series.
Now that we’ve covered some articles on the actual theology (in a practical sense) and some possible issues of conscience. Perhaps now you have, like me, begun to wonder if we’ve bought into a system of which God may not approve.
Now your child comes back from school to let you know that they will be doing weeks and weeks of ‘Christmas stuff’ leading up to the holidays.
Now you’re torn.
Do you let your child participate, or otherwise?
By letting them participate they are essentially celebrating the roots of all the stuff we’ve looked at.
Here are some pros about pulling your child from such activities:
- they are not dabbling in pagan rituals
- they are identified as ‘different’ from the rest (which is biblical) and for all the right biblical reasons
- it will create conversation and discussion which might otherwise not get started (someone might get saved as a result)
- you can spend the time they would have spent doing something biblical (or something else period)
Here are some cons I considered:
- the activities are typically quite fun and the child would miss this fun with their school mates
- they would be identified as ‘different’ which from a child’s perspective is a bit trickier to deal with
- they may get labelled as a Jehovah Witness
This year we elected to let our daughter do another year of ‘Christmas stuff’ (her first year in kindergarten) but I’m not quite sure it was the right decision. There is no question when the weeks leading up to the holiday were complete she came out of there very positive about santa and his ways as well as ultra positive about the christmas tree which, in my opinion, is the worst of them all.
I’m just not completely sure we made the right decision but we are human and we want to learn.
One thing I have pulled out of this for certain is that if you elect to pull your child, it is critical that you have big plans for Jesus during that time. In the next post I will start to explore exactly that – what we as parents can do with our children that will glorify God while simultaneously boycotting vain and even pagan rituals of these well established holidays.
Stay tuned for more.
I don’t have kids, so I don’t know how this goes down back at home, but I think there is little point in hiding the truth from children. They may take time to develop the understanding to handle those truths, so that’s at the discretion of the parents, and would be a reason to extract the child from the situation until he/she was equipped.
One method is to prep your child before those events happen. “Here’s what’s happening tomorrow in school. Here’s what that means, and here’s what we believe about it. Go see for yourself.” Experience the real world and how to process that.
Another reason you might not pull the child from the event is that it’s not your child’s decision, so he/she can’t explain it to others.
Kids go to school all the time and choose not to participate in learning, so I don’t see why they can’t be there and choose not to participate in other activies as well.
I think people will make their own decisions. It might be useful to find out what your child chooses on his/her own earlier than later, so you can help guide. i.e. “This is what you did. Why did you do that? Here’s what I would have done. Do we agree?”