Before tonight’s post, some housekeeping: 

I loved reading through the best holiday gift memories on the last post–so many I made note of and some incredibly meaningful ideas in there.  Thank you for sharing. 

The #ShareTheWow Maui Jim sunnies winner (generated by random.org) is comment #411, Julie Cosgrove:  When I was 7 and my sister was 9, I vividly remember walking down the red carpeted stairs into our basement on Christmas morning. As we rounded the corner, we saw them. Two used wooden school desks with the desk tops that you could put up (and hold up with a ruler!). The pure joy of that moment will never be forgotten…

Congrats Julie, please e-mail your contact info to kellehamptonblog@comcast.net with subject line “Maui Jim Giveaway” and you’ll be rocking some new sunnies soon.

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On to the post.  Brace yourselves.  We’re talking Jesus tonight. 

We’re four days into our advent calendar, twenty-one days away from Christmas, four Hallmark holiday movies into our nightly to-do list, and amid everything I love about this season–the family time, the giving, the wonder, the love–I can’t help but grapple with what I want to teach my kids about the historical and Biblical story behind Christmas. 

It’s not that they don’t already know about the story of Jesus’ birth.  It’s beautiful history, a story of love, and I want my kids to understand the meaning behind the holidays they celebrate. Even if they are born from just that–a story. 

We’ve visited a live nativity in past years.  We used to have our own children’s nativity set, but the kids kept running off with Joseph.  And then a wise man was missing, next a sheep, and when Baby Jesus finally went M.I.A and all that was left was a stable, two wise men and a goat, I put the last pieces in the Goodwill pile. 

I know Luke 2.  When I hear it read, I whisper along in certain parts because I have a lot of it memorized.  I am fascinated and inspired by the life of Jesus.  I’ve read the Bible–so many hours of reading the Bible, it probably tallies up to a surprising portion of my life.  And the ultimate lessons of character that the story of Jesus’ life leaves us with–I want my children to know that.  To know love and compassion and wisdom and selflessness.

But when I read the Christmas story to my kids and it talks about God sending his son to the earth, sometimes I get uncomfortable.  Past Religion Flare-ups…PRF.  I love the real story of Jesus as a man, I connect with Mary in a way that any mother who desperately loves her child can, I understand the inspiration behind the deep love of a God who’d send his only son to Earth for us.  But my faith is not centered around Jesus, and I don’t feel comfortable with the idea that our salvation hinges on believing that he was the son of God. That all those people who don’t believe that are wrong.  I think faith is bigger than that. 

My brother and I talk faith almost every week.  They are some of my favorite conversations, often lasting over an hour and including excited ramblings and passionate speeches.  Today, after reading several passages from “Jesus: Who Do You Say I Am?,” a Life magazine issue currently on stands, I asked him, “Why is it that I have an easier time telling my kids that Santa is real–something I know to be a made-up story–than to tell them that Jesus was anything more than an incredible, inspiring man who impacted our society and showed us God’s love?” 

And I think it’s because Santa is a temporary legend, one that begins with wonder and imagination but fizzles, still leaving sweet memories of wonder and imagination.  The idea of him feels harmless.  I never expect my kids to believe in him past a certain age anyway.  Jesus though–with regards to his death and salvation, etc. feels more permanent and complicated–a story that, based on my past, begins with a miraculous event and leaves memories of–well, confusion.  With my kids, I’m not ready to go beyond who he was as a man, his message and the incredible love his story gives us. 

The thing is, God feels like faith to me.  I’ve finally embraced God in this incredibly huge and wonderful way, and I understand the mystery, the beauty, the grace, the love, the purpose and yes even the unanswered questions of God in my life in a way that I feel comfortable living and passing on to my children.  I understand that He is many things to different people.  But Jesus as the only way to salvation, as the one truth of the many beautiful beliefs and stories out there, as the thing you MUST believe or be eternally sentenced–well that feels like religion, and I choose faith over religion.

Religion made an impact in my life that left a meteor-shaped hole.  I’ve come to love the scar and the room it’s made for love, but it’s been years of patching things up.  Having had that impact, I take what I teach my children about their souls and their eternity so incredibly serious.  I just want them to know faith in a loving, inclusive, free-to-think-otherwise way.  Limitless. 

One of my favorite Jesus sentiments I read in this “Jesus” Life magazine issue today was surprisingly from Moby.  As in techno Bodyrock Moby.  “I find Jesus through prayer,” he said.  “I try to read the Bible everyday…The notion of Christ as my savior is not something I focus on.  I would say that He is.  Who knows what happens when we die?  I have no idea…I almost wish that life eternal wasn’t part of the issue, because I sometimes feel that it’s like dealing with an adolescent–I’ll let you borrow the car if you clean the garage.  I’d rather just clean the garage and not get into this system of doing things for rewards.  I have an understanding of the universe as an unknowable but fascinating and wonderful place.  I see human beings as part of that universe.”

And I totally get that.

So, we’re here.  Digging into an unknowable but fascinating and wonderful place.  It’s the fourth day of the advent.  We’re talking about Santa and playing along in the imaginative story we enjoyed when we were kids. And yet of course I know that it’s just a tiny part of what I want this holiday to mean to my children.  More important, we are creating traditions that celebrate love and family and hope and togetherness and giving and peace.  Some might call that Jesus.

I’m really trying to read the Christmas story with more of an open mind and an imagination.  To put my reservations and doubts aside and find the most purposeful way to pull the love from such a beautiful story and transform it in a way that feels good to give my children.  I don’t have to agree with everything in the Bible for the story of Jesus’ birth to be meaningful.

And this just in:  I bought a new nativity set today.  With the sweetest little Baby Jesus you ever did see.

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