Relatable with Allie Beth Stuckey - Ep 724 | Why My Family Celebrates Christmas but Not Santa

Episode Date: December 14, 2022

Today on this very Christmas-themed episode, we’re answering the question: Is Christmas pagan? We look at John Piper's response to this question and elaborate on why, while some Christmas traditions may have pagan origins, it is very good to celebrate the birth of Christ and all it represents. Ultimately, like with all things, we want to make sure not to esteem Christmas above Christ himself. Then, we get into a controversial take: not sharing Santa with one's kids. Allie shares her story of finding out Santa isn’t real and how this impacted her view of the topic now. We talk about laying a foundation of integrity and trustworthiness for our kids. Lastly, we take a look at the White House's Respect for Marriage Act signing ceremony and Biden's statement that LGBTQ people are being "thrown out of restaurants" and that trans kids and doctors offering "gender-affirming care" are being targeted. We respond to these wild statements and look at why leftists have gotten so extreme, so quickly. --- Timecodes: (4:11) Is Christmas a pagan holiday? (34:01) Santa Claus (47:52) Respect for Marriage Act ceremony --- Today's Sponsors: Good Ranchers — change the way you shop for meat today by visiting GoodRanchers.com/ALLIE and use promo code 'ALLIE' for a discount! CrowdHealth — get your first 6 months for just $99/month. Use promo code 'ALLIE' when you sign up at JoinCrowdHealth.com. Patriot Mobile — go to PatriotMobile.com/ALLIE or call 972-PATRIOT and use promo code 'ALLIE' to try Patriot Mobile for two months and get your third month for free! Dwell — enhance your time in the Word with the read-along experience featuring big, bold text & beautiful background art. Go to DwellApp.io/RELATABLE to get 10% off a yearly subscription or 33% off for life! --- Links: Desiring God: "Is Christmas Too Pagan for Christians?" https://www.desiringgod.org/interviews/is-christmas-too-pagan-for-christians The Gospel Coalition: "Is Christmas a Pagan Rip-off?" https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/blogs/kevin-deyoung/is-christmas-a-pagan-rip-off/ --- Relevant Episodes: Ep 540 | A Biblical Take on Santa https://apple.co/3uPDhvr Ep 541 | Christmas Hot Takes | Guest: Nathan Nipper https://apple.co/3YidMR7 --- Christmas Merch: Use code ALLIE20 for 20% off the whole shop! Full collection: https://shop.blazemedia.com/collections/allie-stuckey?sort_by=created-descending#MainContent --- Buy Allie's book, You're Not Enough (& That's Okay): Escaping the Toxic Culture of Self-Love: https://alliebethstuckey.com/book Relatable merchandise – use promo code 'ALLIE10' for a discount: https://shop.blazemedia.com/collections/allie-stuckey

Hey, this is Steve Day. If you're listening to Allie, you already understand that the biggest issues facing our country aren't just political. They're moral, spiritual, and rooted in what we believe is true about God, humanity, and reality itself. On the Steve Day show, we take the news of the day and tested against first principles, faith, truth, and objective reality. We don't just chase narratives and we don't offer false comfort.

We ask the hard questions and follow the answers wherever they leave, even when it's unpopular. This is a show for people who want honesty over hype and clarity over chaos. If you're looking for commentary grounded in conviction and unwilling to lie to you about where we are or where we're headed, you can watch this D-Day show right here on Blaze TV or listen wherever you get podcasts. I hope you'll join us. Is Christmas pagan? Should Christians tell kids that Santa Claus is real? We will be discussing these things today. Also, at the very end, we will recap the circus that was yesterday's White House ceremony for the science.

of the so-called respect for marriage act. We will respond to some of the things that Joe Biden had to say it is a full episode. You guys are going to love it. I just have a really good feeling. This episode is brought to you by our friends at Good Ranchers. So go to Good Ranchers.com. Use promo code All right. Good Ranchers.com code alley.

Good Ranchers.com. Code All right, guys. So a Christmas episode that I've been wanting to do for, a little bit, but there's been so much going on in the news that I felt like I need to cover, but we are finally getting to it. We're finally getting to the conversation of Christmas being pagan or not and also what I believe about Santa. So there is going to be a lot of gospel, a lot of scripture woven into this episode that

even if you don't agree with me, I hope we'll still edify you because that, of course, is what the word of God does. It informs, it encourages, it equips, and it edifies. So if you listen to nothing else that I say, if you're compelled by nothing else that I say on this episode, at least be encouraged by what scripture has to say. Before we get into it, let me say a couple of things. So yesterday, at the end of the podcast, I said that Dallas Jenkins is going to be on the show tomorrow. I asked you for some questions that you might have for him. It's actually going to be on Monday that the episode is going to come out. And so you still got time.

Send me some questions that you might have for him. You've already sent me a few. The Dallas Jenkins, if you don't know, he is the creator of the series The Chosen. I have lots of different questions for him. And so make sure that you listen to that. Tomorrow I'm going to have Lynn Wilder on the show. She wrote a book with her son called Unveiling Grace. She spent 30 years in the Mormon Church.

before she heard and believed the gospel. And so we are going to listen to her testimony tomorrow. And I think that you are going to be so inspired by her courage. And you're probably going to be in tears as I was at certain points, just reminded again of the goodness and the relentlessness of God in his pursuit of those that he loves and has chosen. So make sure that you tune into that. And then, of course, Monday's episode with Dallas Jenkins as well.

Also, you can still get merch, Christmas merch or non-Christmas merch from the Blaze TV store. We've got a little friendly merch war going on among the Blaze TV hosts. We are winning because we have amazing merch. What can I say? So if you're watching on YouTube, you can see some of our Christmas merch there. buy a pit bull sticker. Our pit bull sticker needs some love. When my producer and I came up with that,

we were like, we might be the only people to buy this sticker. But a few of you like it. You get the inside joke. It's a little pit bull with a cigar saying you better watch out. And then you guys are loving our thrill of hope sweatshirt, like absolutely loving it and then raise a joyful ruckus. But we've got all kinds of non-Christmas. T-shirts, hats, stickers, all that good stuff.

And so go ahead and make your order there. Use Allie 20 for 20% off. We'll link the merch shop in the description of this episode. So you can click on it and go on there and use the code for a discount. All right. I think that's all the points of order that I have there. Let's go ahead and get into it. So I first want to start with this question of whether or not Christmas is a pagan holiday.

This is something that I've seen increasingly over the past few years. I don't remember growing up this being a question. I mean, I knew that like Jehovah's Witnesses didn't celebrate Christmas. And if I remember correctly, also didn't celebrate birthdays and things like that. But that's because they believe things that are not based on scripture at all. And so I did not know that there were people who were Christians who didn't celebrate Christmas because they deem it completely secular or completely pagan. So I've been wanting to look into this because I don't want to just discount or dismiss an

argument simply because I'm not familiar with it or because it's different from how I grew up. And so I dug into this. There are a few different good sources, resources on this. I found John Piper's take on this to be really interesting, thorough and compelling as John Piper does, he cites scripture throughout his response to this assertion that Christmas is just too pagan for Christians to celebrate. And he goes through a lot of the arguments. And we won't go through every single argument that's made. I'll kind of summarize it and then go to scripture as we

as we look to find the answers to this. But I am going to use on desiringgod.org John Piper's article on this, which is actually, I believe, a transcript. of his podcast, Ask Pastor John, which is a podcast that I listen to from time to time. So he is answering this question, is Christmas too pagan for Christians to celebrate? If you don't know anything about the origins of Christmas, it is true that Christmas may coincide with some pagan celebrations and so-called pagan holidays. There are parts of Christmas that we include now in our Christmas celebrations that do not necessarily have a grounding in scripture or have a grounding necessarily in church history. And the Gospel Coalition, Kevin DeYoung, wrote an article for the Gospel Coalition.

There are a lot of things that the Gospel Coalition publishes that I do not agree with. But that doesn't mean, of course, that we discount everything that is written there and every article that is written. So Kevin DeYoung, he writes this interesting article really talking about the history of the church and the history of Christmas specifically within the church. Something that he says is that after the conversion of Constantine in the 4th century, Christians did sometimes adapt and Christianize pagan festivals. Whether they did so wisely and effectively, it's open to historical debate, but the motivation was to transform the paganism of the Roman world rather than to raise it to the ground.

even if Christmas was plopped down on December 25th because of Saturnalia and Soul Invictus, which were the pagan celebrations that a lot of people were saying was really kind of what we know now was Christmas. He argues that that by itself does not entail that the Christian celebration of Christ's birth really began as a pagan festival. He says that there is good evidence that December 25th was not chosen because of any pagan winter holidays. He said, unlike Easter, which developed as a Christian holiday much earlier, there is no mention of birth celebrations from the earliest church fathers. Christian writers like Arranius and Turtullian say nothing about a festival in honor of Christ's birth or origin even mocks Roman celebrations of birth anniversaries as pagan practices. This is a pretty good

indication, he says, that Christmas was not yet on the ecclesiastical calendar, and that if it were, it would not have been tied to a similar Roman holiday. He also says none of the church fathers in the first centuries of the church makes any reference to a supposed connection between Christmas and Saturnalia or Soul Invictus. There is no suggestion that the birth of Jesus was set at the time of pagan holidays until the 12th century. And Christmas was moved from January 6th, to December 25th to correspond with Soul. and Victus. Centuries later, post-enlightenment scholars of comparative religions began popularizing the idea that the early Christians retrofitted winter solstice festivals for their own purposes,

for the first millennium of the church's history. There is also an argument, an anonymous Christian treatise argues from 4th century North Africa stated that March 25th was the day of the passion of the Lord and of his conception for on that day he was conceived on the same that he suffered. So that has been a point that has been made throughout church history that maybe it is kind of accurate or pretty accurate that Jesus was born on December 25th. Maybe it doesn't have anything to do with the solstice or any of these pagan holidays. Maybe it doesn't even have to do with Christians after Constantine taking over and trying to Christianize pagan Rome.

Maybe it actually does align with when the conception was in March, they say, and in December. So I think the summary of this is really that it's kind of complicated. And no one really knows for sure. No one totally knows for sure why Christmas is when it is and why we have some of the traditions we do around Christmas, why some of the early church fathers thought that celebrating birth was kind of a pagan practice and why other church fathers and later church fathers actually said, no, this is something that we do need to celebrate and something that we need to recognize. And we could spend a really long time on the history of the debate,

the discussion, the back and forth and what the Christianizing of the ancient world really looked like and how Christians were ambassadors of redemption. And in a lot of ways were in the true effective sense, culture warriors that sought to Christianize every sphere that they occupied, that could be an entire podcast series in itself. But to summarize it, it's a little bit complicated. There are different parts like the tree and the holly and the stars and the tinsel and all of that that some people say have its roots in ancient pagan Rome. Some people say, no, Christians brought this in as they were celebrating Christmas. for exclusively Christian reasons.

And so there's a lot of debate and a lot of discussion around the origin of Christmas and how it has changed over time. This is something that Charles Spurgeon says, and I'll kind of go back and forth to some of his arguments about this and some of the statements about this because I think that they are to use an overused term today, like nuanced in a very compelling, and persuasive and biblical way. So Charles Spurgeon said this about Christmas. He said, we venture to assert that if there be any day of the year,

of which we may be pretty sure that it was not the day on which the Savior was born, it is the 25th of December. So he doesn't buy the assertion from North Africa centuries before that said that this was probably the day of the birth of Christ. He says, regarding not the day, let us nevertheless give thanks to God for the gift of his dear son. So he makes varying but not contradictory arguments about Christmas, that Christmas is not necessarily a special day above any other day. We don't know that this is when Jesus was born. We don't give in to a lot of the commercialization or the paganization

of Christ's birth. But we should be celebrating the birth of Christ. That is something that we should honor that we should revere. So if it is this time of year that we are particularly and especially focusing on that, then let us do it and let us celebrate it. Now I will get into that John Piper argument that I mentioned at the beginning and then I kind of diverted into another argument. I'll tell you what he says based on scripture about the pagan origins of Christmas and if or how Christians should celebrate it, but let me pause. Hey, this is Steve Day. If you're listening to Alley, you already understand that the biggest issues facing our country

aren't just political. They're moral, spiritual, and rooted in what we believe is true about God, humanity, and reality itself. On the Steve Day show, we take the news of the day and tested against first principles, faith, truth, and objective reality. We don't just chase narratives and we don't offer false comfort. We ask the hard questions and follow the answers wherever they leave, even when it's unpopular. This is a show for people who want honesty over hype and clarity over

chaos. If you're looking for commentary grounded in conviction and unwilling to lie to you about where we are or where we're headed, you can watch this D-Day Show right here on Blaze TV or listen wherever you get podcasts. I hope you'll join us. Okay, so here's what John Piper argues. He argues on the one hand that we should be keeping ourselves from idols. And I would say that the people who say that we should not be celebrating Christmas in this way, we shouldn't be having the gifts and the tree and all of that, we shouldn't try to take over, take on that which is actually secular. I think that the motivation there, in the purest sense from those who are motivated, you know, by godly intentions is to protect themselves from idolatry, to protect themselves from

worldly distractions and to ensure that they really are focusing on Christ. We say Jesus is the reason for the season, but in reality, Jesus, Jesus, is the reason for every season. He is not more the reason for this season than he is, you know, the reason for spring or the reason for summer or fall or any other time of the year. So I think that there is, can be at least a good motivation behind just kind of rejecting a lot of the celebrations that we do see at Christmas time. And John Piper acknowledges that he mentions First Kings 1228 in which King Jeroboam, he was an idolatrous king. He made two golden calves and called the people to worship them. And then verse 33 says that he devised the time

for that celebration out of his own heart. The essential problem there was idolatry to golden calves. And so some people would say, John Piper acknowledges, that Christmas is similar to that, that they devised the day out of their own heart, December 25th, to celebrate Christ's birth, but really just used it as a justification to engage in pagan celebration. and to do the things that we want to do, get the things that we want, take off work, whatever it is. And Deuteronomy 1231 warrants God's people as the enter into the promised land that you will not, you shouldn't celebrate and you shouldn't worship God the way that they worship their

idols. They even burn their sons and their daughters in the fire to their gods. Do what I have commanded you, God says, and do not add to it or take front. it. And there are dozens and dozens, John Piper says, of meticulous stipulations in the Old Testament about how to approach God, how the priests are to function, the sacrifices they were to be doing the sacred spaces to be used. Now, we are not governed by all of the same specifics that the people of Israel were governed by, but the principle stands that we are not to mimic the worship and the celebration and the orders that are followed by the world.

And then he goes to the New Testament, Mark 7, 9. They were rejecting the commandment to honor your father and mother by diverting financial care. This is the Pharisees, I believe, diverting financial care from their parents to an ostensibly worshipful dedication of their money to the synagogue instead of their parents' needs. The issue there was not that traditions exist. That's not the problem, but that they contradict the commandment of God. Honor your father and mother. And so the point that John Piper is making here is that there's nothing.

wrong with traditions. There's obviously nothing wrong with dedicating money to the synagogue, but doing that for show, doing that for some kind of clout as the leaders there seem to be doing while trying to get around one of the Ten Commandments, Honor Your Father and Mother. So giving money to the synagogue to make them look important at the expense of the needs of their parents, Jesus says is wicked. Again, that is a form of idolatry. It's a form of self-idolatry. So the traditions weren't the problem, but the heart behind them were. That is a theme, of course, that we see throughout scripture, but especially in Jesus' ministry. A lot of people think that Jesus kind of diminishes the importance of sin, that he doesn't really talk about sin. Actually, he

doubles down on sin and goes deeper than what we actually say or do, but he goes into the heart. our motivations, what we think, he actually takes purity and holiness and righteousness and obedience to another level. The problem with the Pharisees, according to Jesus, was not that they were holy. It's not that they were obedient. It's not that they were righteous. A lot of people think that the problem with the Pharisees, according to Jesus, is that they cared about rules too much. No, it's because they didn't actually care enough. They weren't righteous enough. They weren't holy enough because their hearts weren't in it. Their hearts were far from God. That's why Jesus calls them whitewashed tombs. You look really good on the outside, on the inside, you are decaying. So Jesus actually takes the

expectation of God's people to an even higher level because he takes it to a heart level. And if you're asking, well, how can I possibly make sure that my heart is totally pure before God? How can I make sure that every intention that I have is holy and righteous as Jesus apparently is demanding of people in the New Testament, well, of course, that is where Jesus comes in. That's where he comes in to give us a new heart, to make us new creations, to die in our stead because we couldn't follow the law to a tea, because we couldn't be perfectly obedient and perfectly righteous, and therefore we couldn't ever make ourselves acceptable to God. But Jesus, through his sacrifice, makes us acceptable to God.

By wiping our slate clean, by making us new, by standing in our stead, by being. our advocate. So that's just an aside to there. Jesus in this passage, just as he is in all passages, he is getting down to the heart of the matter. And really, that is also the thrust of Piper's argument here about Christians, about Christmas, getting to the heart of the matter, why we are doing what we do when it comes to December 25th or really any day.

John Piper goes on to say, Jeremiah 10, 2 through 5 says, learn not the way of the nations. And this is a reference that you'll hear a lot from people who don't believe in celebrating Christmas at all. A tree from the forest has cut down and worked with an axe by the hands of a craftsman. They decorate it with silver and gold. They fasten it with hammer and nails so that it cannot move. Their idols are like scarecrows in a cucumber field and they cannot speak. They have to be carried. So a lot of people say, well, this sounds like cutting down a Christmas tree. and nailing it to a stand so it can't move and putting tinsel and ornaments and lights on it, isn't that what Jeremiah is talking about?

Why are we doing that? We shouldn't be doing that. The Bible is pretty clear that we shouldn't be doing that. But again, the point that John Piper makes, the point that I am making here, it's not that cutting down a tree is bad. It's not that ornaments are bad. It's not that lights are bad. It is talking about the absurdity of worshipping an inanimate object that cannot hear you,

that cannot save you. The point here was about idolatry. The point here was about what they're worshipping, not the act of cutting down a tree. And I think that we see that in 1st Corinthians 10, 25 through 28, the principle of what we're talking about. So here's what Paul says to the Christians in Corinth. Eat whatever is sold in the meat market without raising any question on the ground of conscience. Four, and this is the point that I also made, this is the reference that I made when we were talking about whether or not Halloween is really a pagan holiday that Christians should have no part of. Paul references Psalm 24-1. The earth is the lords and the fullness thereof the world and those who dwell therein. For he has founded upon the seas and established it upon the rivers.

That's Psalm 24-2. Paul doesn't go that far, but just to give you a little context, rather. He says, the earth is the Lord's and the fullness thereof in 1 Corinthians 10. If one of the unbelievers invites you to dinner and you are disposed to go, eat whatever is set before you without raising any question on the ground of conscience. But if someone says to you, this has been offered and sacrificed to an idol, then do not eat it for the sake of the one who informed you and for the sake of conscience. And so he is saying here, don't eat meat sacrificed idols. if you're told that it's sacrificed to idols,

but not because the meat is bad. Not because there is something inherently evil about the meat, because an idol is nothing. It's just a piece of carved wood or it's a tree or it's a golden calf. It has absolutely no power whatsoever. It's just an inanimate object. So it's not that the meat is bad. There's no power in that.

But the only reason to reject meat that you know is sacrifice to idols is because it could hurt the conscience of the person who told you that. So if the person who told you, hey, this meat is sacrificed to idols, is either like a weak believer and just can't engage in any part of that without being tempted to sin or without losing faith or as an unbeliever who expects Christians to be completely set apart from anything to do with what is sacrificed to idols. And it could hurt your testimony in some way or it could cause confusion in their lives. Then you should refuse that meat.

it's a matter of love to other people it's really not a matter of eating this meat sacrifice to idols of obedience to god john piper says the principle in this passage is this in christ christians are free to eat meat that has been offered to idols provided there is no idolatry involved and provided we are not sending any clear messages to the pagan to the world uh that we worship what they worship and that is a really serious principle. I mean, there is a reason why I don't post anytime I drink alcohol, which I very rarely do, but maybe I'll have a glass of champagne or maybe on a rare occasion I'll have a margarita or something like that.

The reason that I don't post that on Instagram is not because I think it's a sin. It's not a sin to drink alcohol. It is a sin to get drunk as we read in the book of Ephesians because you can can't be filled with the Holy Spirit and be filled with alcohol. One of those things is going to control you at all times. But because I know that there could either be people Christians who that attempts them to sin or it could hurt my testimony, perhaps among unbelievers. And so that is not something that I regularly publicize or I try not to regularly

publicize. If I have, I haven't really thought about it. and I should have thought about it, but it's not because me drinking is a sin. It's not even necessarily because me talking about drinking is a sin because it's not. But the reason why I don't glorify it on social media is for the sake of other people. So it is the same principle here. And so how does this tie in to Christmas? It ties into Christmas because the things that we do at Christmas, the traditions that we engage in, the gifts that we give,

the songs that we sing. It's really about the state of the heart and how we are using these things to engage with non-believers and to give our testimony to the world. Now, I think, and this is my wording, I'm sure that probably John Piper would agree with this, that there are, of course, limitations to that

in that the world isn't our judge. Like we are not trying to win the approval of the world We are not trying to fit into the world's definitions of what is right, what is wrong, and what is loving and what is not. We hear all the time from non-Christians that a Christian isn't a true Christian if they believe in biblical, natural marriage. So we're not trying to win the approval and get a pat on the back from the world. We are simply talking about situations in which it could be perceived that we worship the same worldly things. that they do. And I think that applies to Christmas in that as we engage in all of the fun things that Christmas involves, that we are very careful about what and how we celebrate, that we are

very careful about what is going on in our own hearts. What are we worshiping? What are we celebrating? Because the truth is the earth is the Lord's. Every day is gods. Pagans don't own any day. Satan doesn't own any day. He doesn't own the trees. He doesn't own Tensell. He doesn't own any Bing Crosby songs. He doesn't own these things. All of these things were created by people that God created.

All of them are a part of God's world. This is our father's world and he owns it. And Christians are absolutely in the business of redemption. We are in the business. of taking things that maybe have used, have been used for a bad purpose or an old purpose and making them new and using the things that God created to worship him and to glorify him. God made treats. He created this colorful, beautiful world and singing voices and all of these things that can

be used to celebrate him and celebrate the birth of the Lord. I think it's really important for Christians to be careful, to not esteem, Christmas any higher than any other day. And gosh, I'm just as guilty of that, that Christmas or Easter is a day that is somehow more important than other days. Or these are the seasons of the year that I reserve meditation on Christ's birth or meditation on the resurrection when really these are parts of the gospel. And the gospel is supposed to characterize every day of our lives. And here's what Charles Spurgeon kind of has to say about that. We esteem every day alike, but still, as the season suggests thoughts of Jesus,

let us joyfully remember our dear Redeemer's glorious birth. Who but he was ever longed for by such a multitude of hearts? When else did angels indulge in midnight songs? Or did God hang a new star in the sky? To whose cradle did rich and poor make so willing a pilgrimage and offer such hearty and unsought oblations. Well may earth rejoice. Well may all men cease their labor to celebrate the great birthday of Jesus.

Let gladness rule the hour. Let holy song and sweetheart music accompany our soul in the raptures of joy. So when it comes to Christmas, I think that Christians should abandon any superstitious part of it. We should do our best to exclude ourselves from the celebrations that have to do with Christmas that are not glorifying to the Lord that do maybe push our hearts or push our children's hearts towards idolatry and towards greed and towards just getting and accumulating and instead engage in all of the traditions and the practices that are constantly pointing us to the Lord.

And that is true again, not just of the Christmas season, but of all seasons in the year. So it's Christmas pagan. There might be some pagan parts of the Orrida. origin of Christmas. Is it okay and even good for Christians to celebrate Christmas? Yes, I think so. The earth is the Lord's and the fullness thereof. This is his day, just like any other day. And there is always a reason to celebrate the birth of the Lord. And guess what? Christmas this year falls on a Sunday. We should be going to church, by the way, on Christmas Day. If you were tempted like I was to think, well, I'm not, I don't want to go out of the house on Christmas Day. I just want to wear my pajamas all day. I don't want to go

anywhere. You know what? That was my first thought too. But then my husband, being the amazing man and leader that he is, he immediately was like, we're going to church. It's Sunday and it's Christmas. And I kind of had to snap back and say, wow, why would I even have the thought that we wouldn't go to worship the Lord on Christmas Day at church? So I encourage you to do the same. And I totally understand if that was not your first inclination, sadly, it wasn't mine either, but that is absolutely a day that Christian should be gathering together. And this is actually a perfect transition into the conversation about Santa. And why my family does not do Santa, why we don't tell our kids that Santa is real,

because we want to engage in the parts of Christmas that point us to Jesus. the whole reason that we even have a Christmas that Christians celebrate. But let me pause before we get into it. Okay, Santa Claus. This is maybe one of my hottest takes, maybe one of my most controversial opinions, is that I do not believe in Christians telling their children that Santa Claus is real. Now, if you do that, that is not me question. your sanctification or salvation in any way.

I have a lot of godly friends who have chosen differently. I was told that Santa Claus was real for a period of time growing up. And yet, as I've thought about it, of course, I used to think that why wouldn't we tell our children that Santa Claus is real? It's fun. It's fun for them to think of the wonder and the magic and the mystery. And there's so much innocence wrapped up in that. There's a lot of fun, and I can see that.

I mean, I think I had fun with it growing up, and I certainly thought at one point that I would want to pass that down to my kids. We, you know, would put out cookies and milk for Santa Claus. I would put out some fruit on the back porch for Rudolph. I'm just, you know, being considerate over here. And so there is a lot of fun. There's a lot of fun tradition, I think, that comes with telling your kids about Santa Claus and pretending that Santa Claus is real. But there are a few reasons why we are simply not doing that as a family for our kids. Number one, I do not want to set the precedent of lying to my children.

I know that it's just pretend and we can call it pretend, sure. We can say that it's not lying, that it's not deceit, that it is, I don't know, helping our kids imagination. but at the end of the day, we are telling them something that's not true. So we can use all kinds of euphemisms and excuses for that, but at the end of the day, we are trying to convince them of something that we know is not correlated to any kind of reality. I remember, and this is not going to be every kid's story.

I understand that. This is very much my personality. I found out when I was six that Santa wasn't real. And I didn't want to find out that Santa wasn't real. But that's what happens when you have older brothers, who are a lot older than you at the time. And my oldest brother, and he is a very, he's a very kind person. And so he wasn't being cruel to me or anything like that.

But, you know, he was 16 years old. And so 16 year old boys say things like this. I said something about the tooth fairy coming to, you know, give me money for my tooth. Duh. And he, I don't remember exactly what he said. But he kind of scoffed at that that I said that I said that the tooth fairy like left something on, on my way. window and he scoffed at it. And, you know, I was kind of embarrassed and I was like, why did he scoff

at me saying something about the tooth fairy? That's strange. And I lay to my bed and I thought about that reaction. And then I was like, you know what? I'm just going to ask my mom tomorrow. She'll tell me the truth. She'll tell me if the tooth fairy is real. So I remember asking my mom in the backyard if the tooth fairy was real. And when I asked her, she told me the truth. She said, no, the tooth fairy is not real. And then it was like, boom, boom, Easter bunny, Santa Claus. It just, I just all put it together. Deductive reasoning. Well, if that's not real, then this isn't real either. And I was really sad. And I was embarrassed that all these people, my brothers and my parents and my grandmother,

that they all knew something that I didn't and that they had been tricking me for several years and that they let me get excited about it and that none of it was true. Now, again, that might not be true of every child who finds out that Santa Claus is not real. They could be totally fine with it. However, I remember feeling betrayed. I remember feeling hurt. And there are a lot of things that we have to try to convince our kids up that might be difficult for them to grasp, but difficult for them to believe.

Like, I want the best for you. There's a reason why you can't have three cupcakes after dinner every night. Vegetables are good for you. or that, hey, here's an important one. God is real. Jesus died on the cross for your sins. There are a lot of things that we are working really hard as parents to tell our children about.

And I don't want to cause a crack in their trust at all by lying to them about something that is pretty big, which is that Santa Claus is bringing you gifts and placing them under the tree and that he is traveling the world every Christmas Eve to do the same for every child on earth. I want to, as much as I can, lay a foundation of trust. I want them to know, I want them to be able to say and believe and know is true that my parents don't lie to me. They wouldn't lie to me.

They wouldn't be deceitful. They wouldn't manipulate me in any way. So if my parents tell me something, then I can trust them because I know it's true. And so that is as much as I possibly can, how the kind of precedent that I want to set and how I want to lay a foundation of just integrity and trustworthiness for my children. And that last point that I made about God being real, and that is something that we are constantly trying to tell our children about, that is, of course, the much bigger part of this for me, is that we are constantly telling our children, Jesus is the reason for the season.

Jesus is the reason for the season. Remember Jesus. It's more important to give gifts than get gifts. but it's completely unfair that we are simultaneously trying to tell them that while we are distracting them with all of this other stuff that is much easier for their young brains to focus on that they are going to get all of these gifts. I'm not saying that it's wrong to give gifts to our kid, but making Christmas about that, focusing on that, and then focusing on this like unseen person who is not

only giving you gifts, but is basing the gifts that he has given you off of a list that he has created, which is based on whether or not that child has been naughty or nice, that is not the message that I want to communicate to my child. When I am trying to teach my child about grace, when I am trying to teach my child about obedience motivated by love, by gratitude, and I'm trying to teach my child about what Christmas is, what Advent is, why Jesus came. And I'm trying to teach my child, and I'm I mean, all of those things are less instantly gratifying than a bunch of the other stuff that centers on Santa Claus bringing you gifts. And I also think that Santa Claus is like a cheaper and legalistic version of God. That Santa Claus, as I said, he is giving gifts based on whether you are good or bad.

and he is watching you to he's seeing you when you're sleeping he knows when you're awake he knows if you've been bad or good so be good for goodness sake or else what you're not going to get a good gift you're going to get coal in your stocking you better obey mommy and daddy because there's this unseen person in the north pole who is checking to see if you have been naughty or nice is that the gospel is that what we want to do that? them to be motivated by when it comes to good works, when it comes to obedience? I don't think so. I mean, the fact is, is that there really is an unseen being. There really is an omnipotent, omniscient being who sees you when you're sleeping and who knows when you're awake, who can

discern your thoughts from afar, who knows the motivation of your heart. There is in all-powerful, all-knowing, all-seeing, all-present being who can see and knows every part of you. There really is a gift giver. And his name is not Santa Claus. His name is God. It's Jesus Christ. The very person, the very being that I am trying to get my kids to focus on all the time, but especially as we're saying, this is the reason for Christmas.

So why would I distract them from this? that really good, really existent gift giver with a lesser and legalistic version. James 1.17, every good gift and every perfect gift is from where? The North Pole? No. It's from above. Coming down from the Father of Lights with whom there is no variation or shadow due to change every good gift and every perfect gift is from above. It comes from the father who has also given you parents and has given them whatever resources God has decided to give them. Your parents are using real money, real gifts, real resources that God has given them to give you good gifts. And that gift giving that your parents are doing for you is a representation of the gospel, is a representation of God that you didn't

do anything to earn these gifts. We're giving you these gifts. We're giving you these gifts. because we love you because you're our child. I'm not giving you these gifts because you are naughty or nice. I wasn't making a list. I wasn't tallying it up and there isn't this guy at the North Pole doing the same. I'm giving you these gifts freely. I'm giving you these gifts because you are loved. And isn't that what God did for us through Christ?

Isn't that what God does for us? So to me, Santa is a distraction from the gospel. It's a cheap version of God. and I just don't want to distract my kids. And that's not saying that we do it perfectly. And that's not to say that we don't do a lot of like fun things on Christmas. Not everything has to do with a nativity scene. Not everything has to do with an advent devotional.

We do gifts. We have lots of fun traditions. We watch at least my husband and I do and my parents. it's a wonderful life. I mean, that's not necessarily about the Christmas story. But in all of these things, we try to point them to Christ. In all of these things, we try to point them to good gift giving and the good gift giver. And all of these things, we try to point them to the gospel. In my opinion, Santa Claus is a distraction from that. Now, I also don't think Santa Claus should be demonized. Like, I don't try to just hide Santa Claus from my kids. I think that he can be a character of Christmas.

That's fine. He or you can talk about the real history of St. Nicholas and how he gave children around 200 AD in a village, all of these gifts. And you can talk about his generosity. You can talk about his history that St. Nicholas was a real person and how we can learn from his charity and generosity. But again, that charity and generosity comes from the love that Christ has given us in our hearts. It is a reflection of the love of God demonstrated through Christ. And so there are a lot of ways

to incorporate Santa Claus. I think that's fine. One way I will not incorporate is by telling my children that he is real and is watching them and gives them gifts. Again, just a very flimsy and cheap and false version of the gospel, which is actual good news. So that's our reason. That's our reasoning for not for not engaging in the traditional Santa Claus stuff. And I think it goes back to what we were talking about in the first part and the first chunk of this episode is that we, I think, just have to be careful in the kinds of traditions surrounding Christmas or any holiday or any time of the year that we are engaging in. Traditions aren't bad.

Holidays aren't bad time off. Is it bad? Hot chocolate and trees and all of these things. they are not bad, but what are they for? What are we doing them for? What is our heart behind it? What is our intent? What are we teaching to and showing our children? So that's my summary. I could probably talk about that a lot more. All right. We have a little bit of time left. And so I did want to talk about, because we mentioned it a little yesterday, I did want to talk about this ceremony that our esteemed president Joe Biden had at the White House as he was signing the so-called respect

for Marriage Act. Go back and listen to yesterday's episode. Joe Biden decided to include drag queens that dance for children at bars in his signing ceremony. And this just shows, once again, like what this bill is really about. It's not really about interracial and so-called gay marriage. This is really just another step in the sexual revolution. It was to make a point trying to say that, you know, Republicans who voted against this are bad and all of that. It just had to do with the circus. That is Joe Biden's White House. And he made a couple of incredible statements about the state of the country and about the state of discrimination in the United States.

So here's Joe Biden saying that gay people are being run out of restaurants in the United States, apparently. When a person can be married in the morning and thrown out of a restaurant for being gay in the afternoon. This is still wrong. Um, is that happening? Are gay people being thrown out of a restaurant? I would love to, I would love to know if that is happening anywhere in the country. And even if it were, is that, is that relevant to what we're talking about? And I think he's talking about like the Supreme Court cases that we've talked about recently. 3.03.3. creative and masterpiece cake shop. Of course, that was from a few years ago.

Christian business owners who said, hey, you know what? I'm not going to make a website that celebrates the marriage of two women or two men. And it's the same thing that Jack Phillips said. It's not the same thing as kicking someone out of your restaurant because they're gay. It's not the people that they are refusing. It is the particular kind of content that they're refusing. If a gay person or a transgender person had walked into Jack Phillips's

masterpiece cake shop in Colorado and said, hey, can you bake me a cake? I'm gay, by the way. And then he would have been like, sure, I don't care what your sexual orientation is. He would have baked the cake. But because they said that they wanted a cake that specifically celebrated their wedding ceremony, he said, well, I can't be a part of that celebration. And of course, that's his First Amendment right. And left us are saying, no, the state should actually compel Christian business owners or any business owner to say things that they don't actually believe in that don't align with their beliefs. It's the same thing with three or three creative, another business out of Colorado, the web design service that said, I don't want to create websites that are celebrating things that I don't believe in. I will serve these people if they want me to serve them, but I am not going to make this kind of material that violates my conscience.

And again, that is their First Amendment right. The state of Colorado hates Christians and doesn't believe that they should have these First Amendment rights. And hopefully the Supreme Court, when they decide on this 303 creative case, will rectify that come June when the decision is supposed to be, when the decision is supposed to be published. And so that example that he gave, not only is it like not happening. And even if it were, okay, there's a lot of crazy things that happen across the United States that is not indicative of some like widespread. problem. Literally 70% of Americans believe that homosexuality is a okay and that gay marriage is something that should be like accepted and celebrated. And that is a huge jump from where it was even just seven years ago when the majority of Americans did not actually believe that.

So we're not at risk there. They're trying to create a problem, invent a problem out of been there and, you know, use it to berate the other side about it. And of course, interracial marriage is not at risk. That's like it hasn't been a problem in a very long time. No one, no one is saying that a black person and an Asian person should not be married. No state is trying to push that. Now, Justice Thomas did say in his decision that a lot of the Supreme Court decisions, decisions saying that these things are a right were based on faulty reasoning and that they weren't actually constitutional, the same thing with like guaranteeing the right to birth control. But he is not saying whether or not these things are moral or whether or not these things

should be legal. He's just saying that those specific Supreme Court decisions weren't actually decided constitutionally. And he, of course, included Roe v. Wade in that. And so Democrats are taking that as, oh, these things are at risk. The ironic thing is, is that the so-called respect for marriage act without any religious freedom protections is going to end up causing all kinds of litigation for Christian companies and Christian organizations and churches that are going to be threatened by these activist individuals and are going to be told, you know, you have to perform our wedding or you have to bake this cake or whatever it is or else we're going to sue you. the case is probably going to make its way to the Supreme Court. And it may very well lead to one day the overturning of Obergefell. So like best of luck to you guys. Good job. I mean, you keep on passing these laws. Like eventually, I mean, I'm just not sure that you're going to like the

conclusion to the litigation that is going to come from a bill like this. All right, here's what else Joe Biden had to say. The hundreds of callous, cynical laws introducing the states targeting transgender children, terrifying families, and criminalizing doctors who give children the care they need. We have to protect these children so they know they're loved, and we will stand up for them and say I can seek for themselves. What? Okay, so he's talking about the general mutilation of children.

That's what he's talking about. He's talking about the laws that are saying, hey, a child, you know, the child that's brain, whose brain is not developed and who might just be going through a hard time or might be dealing from trauma or might be on the autism spectrum or might just be confused about things. Like we shouldn't be able to put them on puberty blockers and use the same drug that is used very often to chemically castrate serial pedophiles. Like maybe we shouldn't be cutting off the healthy breasts of 12-year-old girls as they are in Kaiser Permanente in Oakland, California.

just because she says that she doesn't like her body. Yeah, I absolutely think that should be illegal. That is like the bare minimum. Are you kidding me? And there's no solid data proving at all whatsoever that these kinds of procedures are actually helping these kids who identify as transgender, who are dealing with depression and anxiety and suicidal ideation.

If anything, I guarantee these things are making it worse. Listen to the stories of the detransitioners, how they were just pushed through the psychological, and the surgeons and all of the doctors that no one cared in a lot of these cases that in a lot of these cases no one stopped to ask these kids these 17 18 year olds are you sure are you sure like let's talk about some of the underlying mental health issues let's talk about some of your sexual trauma that you've gone through especially when it is with girls with girls what I found it's typically underlying trauma and sexual abuse that they have endured and they are trying to make themselves seem less vulnerable by so-called transitioning. A lot of times with boys, it might be sexual trauma, but it has a lot to do with addiction to pornography and loneliness and isolation and different forms of confusion there.

And yet, rather than addressing these issues, people are making money off of the confusion and the distress and the despair of kids by permanently damaging their bodies and causing them to be permanently sexually dysfunctional and sterile. It is criminal what we are doing to children. And Joe Biden, the impasse and chief, the moderate, the great uniter that the pro-life evangelicals for Biden said that they were voting for for the sake of democracy and the sake of maturity and the sake of normalcy, he's on board with that. Like how does it feel?

How does it feel all these so-called principal conservatives that? that think that they are finding like the perfect balance of pluralism and religious liberty who are constantly only ever asking Christians to compromise morally, who are constantly trying to give people like Joe Biden and Democrats a benefit of the doubt who are always trying to soften their stances, always trying to soften the Democrat stances when it comes to gender and when it comes to sexual perversion, when it comes to abortion, like, how does it feel to be constantly duped? How does it feel to be constantly on the wrong side of these issues?

To constantly tell conservative evangelicals that you're blowing things out of proportion, that that's a slippery slope fallacy, that it's never going to go that far. It's never going to go that direction. That the sexual revolution is not going to go that way. That, oh, it's just, you know, you're just talking about fringe culture war issues. Those culture war issues don't really matter. let's send more money to Ukraine. How does it feel to be wrong literally constantly?

If Christians were simply on the same page about these moral and sexual issues, we wouldn't be where we are, just Christians, just Christians, not even talking about the rest of the world. If just Christians could be clear on these issues, that mutilating a child's body just because they're temporarily confused about something is evil and wrong and should be illegal, we would not be where we are. But because literally millions of professing Christians have said, oh, it's probably not that bad.

It's not going to happen here. Or maybe it's not real. Or but Trump's tweets were really bad. Here we are. Here we are. Okay. Well, here's Joe Biden making a little bit of sense. Many, many, many moons ago back in 2006.

Marriage is between a man and a woman and states must respect that. Nobody's violated that law. There's been no challenge of that law. Why do we need a constitutional amendment? All right. So there he is. I mean, of course, this is just what politicians do. They say that it's because of some moral courage that they later changed or they really evolved on an issue. But both Joe Biden and Barack Obama, as late as, I don't know, I think probably 2010, maybe even 2011, they believed, they said that they believe that marriage is between one man and one woman. Now, whether they were being honest then or whether they're, being honest now or who knows when they were lying or when they were being just cynical politicians. But the fact of the matter is is that this was not very long ago.

This was not very long ago that even the staunchest liberals in this country were like, oh, you know what, I think changing the arrangement of marriage, which is pre-civilizational and is based on biological complementarianism, without which we can't produce children, and without which we really can't protect children by giving them the mother and the father that they need. Like I think that messing that up is probably a bridge too far. And people like to act like we are radical for still believing that, for believing what people have believed for literally thousands of years. Well, I'm not going to be gaslit about that. And when I see drag queens like Marty Cummings and Britta Filter literally at these

ceremonies, people who have danced for children, men dressing up as women scantily clad, I kind of think that maybe, maybe we crazy conservative evangelicals are on to something. Okay. So as I said tomorrow, we will have Lynn Wilder. And let me just tell you real quick about like how the rest of the week is or how the rest of the few weeks are going to go. So for the next, for the three weeks, so next week, the week after that and then the week after that, we have brand new episodes coming out for you.

We are not going to be in studio those days, but we have been working very hard to record episodes that we know that you're going to love. Lots of amazing interviews and some question and answer episodes that you guys have been asking for. Next week, we've got four episodes. The next week, I think, is two episodes. So the week right before, wait, the week after Christmas is two episodes. I can't even remember when Christmas is. So next week before Christmas, we've got four episodes, Monday through Thursday. Week after that, we've got two episodes. And then the week after New Year's, we will have three, I believe, and maybe one replay episode. But all of those, except for that potential replay episode, will be brand new.

And they're like really, really good. And I'm excited for you to hear them. We'll post about this on social media, too, so you don't miss it. All right. Thanks so much for tuning in. We will be back tomorrow. Hey, this is Steve Deast. If you're listening to Allie, you already understand that the biggest issues facing our country aren't just political.

They're moral, spiritual, and rooted in what we believe is true about God, humanity, and reality itself. On the Steve Day show, we take the news of the day and tested against first principles, faith, truth, and objective reality. We don't just chase narratives and we don't offer false comfort. We ask the hard questions and follow the answers wherever they leave, even when it's unpopular. This is a show for people who want honesty over hype and clarity over chaos. If you're looking for commentary grounded in conviction and unwilling to lie to you about where we are or where we're headed, you can watch this D-Day Show right here on Blaze TV or listen wherever you get podcasts.

I hope you'll join us.