The very 1'st post from my iPhone! Gotta love the Blogger App }:) I'd like to take you back to Christmas 2K. (or there abouts) I'd just been laid off from Freightliner & had to move Sara & our 3 boys back into a 2 bedroom apt.
At the time Joshua had just started grade 1, Joseph: kindergarten & Jack was 4yrs. old. Having just gone through a lay-off & having to move made it a very difficult time for all of us, but we were together & that's what was most important for Sara & I. I had been deeply embroiled in a study w/ a couple of friends & lay offs aside I was batting around a very real internal struggle. I had made a decision a number of years before. I had decided to be brutally honest w/ the people in my life. This meant that hurt feelings aside, I would approach any confrontation w/ truth 1'st. Sara & I, at the very beginning of our relationship, had decided we'd have no secrets.
We'd opted, almost immediately, for complete honesty.
With these absolutes in my life, coupled w/ the study I was doing, I found myself very torn. I found myself raising children & feeding them a lie. We had been actively participating in the perpetuation of a myth, told to children for generations, & I couldn't do it anymore. I had to tell our children the truth, I had to tell them there is no Santa Claus. My decision was welcomed by my wife. Sara agreed it was far better to share the joy & wonder of the holiday, than it was to perpetuate a myth. For us the joy of family, of giving and putting aside age old family garbage for the sake of togetherness has always the wonder of Christmas. Sharing that w/ our children was of absolute importance. We also recognized the importance of integrity. To claim things like truth & honesty as a part of our belief structure & then blatantly take part in the mythical story of a fantasy character was hypocritical to say the least.
So there it was, and some people in our lives were horrified, "how dare we take the magic of Christmas from our children". Jack was 4, Joe in J.K. & Josh just starting grade 1. We told them the truth, there's no such person as Santa Claus. We told them that even the person of "Jesus Christ", to the best of our knowledge, while most certainly a real person that existed, scholars had learned much in recent years. For instance the figure of Jesus was quite possibly modeled after the mythical Pagan God Mithras, who had been worshiped by the Roman Soldiers. That these military men were more then likely the reason Rome eventually adopted Christianity. We shared how the traditional practices we recognize were mostly practices borrowed over time from Saturnalia celebrations; & how these and many other traditions, borrowed from many other cultures and their practices have come together to "evolve" into the holiday we now celebrate today. We shared w/ these young boys, barely out of toddler age, that the rest was for them to discover on their own, and that we'd always do our best to help them find real answers to their questions, and we'd always share our own faith's, our doubts & experiences openly, always making truth the absolute goal.
My question to you the reader is simple; what do your kids believe? What truth do you openly share with them? Are they under the false belief that a bunny brings chocolate in the middle of the night? Do you claim to seek truth, but allow your children to believe that a fat man with reindeer brings them presents? Are you bashing mysticism but tucking away a nice comfortably convenient justification to keep this one going? "Well their kidz, come on this one's O.K." Children smell bullshit & hypocrisy like a dog smells fear. I'm committed to the pursuit of truth in my life, & while so many mock my faith as weakness, my children, who've lived with truth & integrity as a staple in their lives, know their parents as a source of absolute truth. Even when the only real truth is that I don't know, & we may have to find out together. There is no bullshit here, I think it's because I have no fear; of those things I know nothing about.
Be Good, Love; S.
