Adam and I grew up drastically different…I believing whole-heartedly in santa and loving our Christmas tree, him not. I would be lying if I said this has not been an area of contention in our marriage. When first married, it was a huge issue when ever having children was brought up. We would sort of “agree to disagree” and that we would not have children until we could agree on those “sorts of things”. Like the Easter bunny or the tooth fairy. Once we were taking care of my sister’s kids while they were out of town and one of them lost a tooth. Heaven forbid I had to be the tooth fairy that night…Adam was NOT happy.
Over the years there have been great debates, awesome arguments over the holidays amongst my family and Adam. He definitely stands his own. One year my sister had him in the drawing and gave him a stuffed grinch wrapped in grinch paper…he took it in stride of course.
Like the easter bunny, Halloween is an issue too. These are all past-times that I am so very accustomed to and grew up with. These are things that we are sorting through and trying to figure out what will work for us.
SMURFS! That’s another area that has always gotten to me. I loved smurfette!!! Adam says he was never allowed to watch them and has a mind-set that the smurfs were bad because smurfette was a boy turned into a girl….something about witchery of some sort.
Where am I going with all of this, you may ask? Well, Adam has a good friend that he works with whose name also happens to be Adam (all the good one’s are!). They both love Jesus but have some differing opinions in some things and have decided to pick a topic to “discuss” each week on Adam’s (my Adam) bible study blog. This is in no way meant to be a method to criticise one another. It is not to judge one another, rather to simply help each other grow in Faith…..and maybe help Adam and I figure out what to do with our own little babe with some of these issues.
So, check it out. The link is also on the side bar with my other favorite sites. Please comment, but don’t attack. And, remember that they are going to start a new topic each Monday.
Hold on, hold on, hold on. I am going to need some more elaboration. Does he not like celebrating the Holidays?! Or he just doesn’t like the more commercial aspects of these particular Holidays?
I mean… why the tooth fairy? Why, Adam, why? Did she short-change you once and now you’ve been permanently scarred?
I need more information! Maybe I should go to the blog and see if there’s any elaboration there. 🙂
Rachel…Yes, read the blog as it is very interesting. A big part I think is that he sees a lot of it as “lying” to kids. Santa, the easter bunny, tooth fairy, etc. He was raised very different but in a very good way. He is truly one of the most Godly men I know and I attribute this to this BUT there has to be a happy medium! As some of the persons posting comments have said….some of these things are simply childhood pleasures that I would hate to have missed. I don’t know…very difficult situation. No on is wrong/right but…..anyways, take a looksie over there….
Well Rachel it like this…. I just don’t want to lie to my kids. Lets say we find out that our 7 year old was lying to us. How do i say “do not lie to me”… and I am teaching them to believe in a lie? My parents gave us money and told us that the Lord has blessed us with this and then took us to go shopping. So I still got lots of presents.
And for the tooth fairy… why not just give your kid $1 (if that is the tooth fairies going rate) and say I am proud of you!
I was not raised to believe that these mythical characters were real. So I guess that this is why I am this way.
I know that Shana and I will have to compromise on this issue.
I do love the Holidays! Get a day off, get to see family, get to eat lots of food.. the list just keeps going!
WELL. I must say that Jason feels the same way Adam does, though he was raised in a family that went along with the typical mythological holiday characters. He thinks it’s foolish to tell children things that aren’t true (as we understand truth – I mean, there COULD be a tooth fairy, after all, couldn’t there be?). He extends this to science and everything else. If a child asks him why the sky is blue, Jason will not give a meaningless answer, even a spiritual one like “God made it that way.” Oh no. He explains how there are jillions of little particles that light bounces off of, etc. I don’t even remember the real answer to that, but you can bet Jason does.
Anyway, I remember we were raised to understand that Santa didn’t exist as he was portrayed by pop culture, flying about on a sleigh, but if grandparents gave us gifts from “Santa,” we went along with it as a fun and silly tradition. I did get into arguments with my neighbor friend about Santa though, and it was a lot of work to get her to understand the folly of her belief in Santa.
My folks were very anti-Halloween. Instead, we had Harvest parties at church and dressed up as Bible characters. Some of those substitutes were pretty hokey, looking back, and I felt a little shy swapping stories, again with the neighbor kids. Like, they dressed up as aliens and went trick-or-treating and got bags full of candy, and I dressed up like Miriam, who nobody had ever heard of.
I like Adam’s comment about the tooth fairy’s going rate.
I remember once when I was young I seen a segment on Donahue about Satan warship in cartoons. There was this psyco that was ranting about the smurfs. I do believe that they gave him ample time to make his case. I didn’t think that he made a good case and at the time i was still watching smurfs (it dates me, and yes I am heterosexual and proud of my heterosexual-ness) I am not calling Adam a psyco or his parent either. I had another fried who was against Santa and Halloween and other holiday fun. (jeramy y.) I remember telling him that he is going to suck the fun out of all the Holidays for his kids and I feel for them. Just like the Happy Holiday people did with Halloween and Christmas. I hope when I get old and fat (getting closer, just broke a button off of my slacks yesterday) I will be able to get a job at the Local mall being Santa. It is part of the American culture. And yes when my kid looses there teeth I will probably give them money. I would have to see a really good case where kids turned away from GOD because they had parents who played along with this stuff, in order for me to stop wanting to have a bit of fun with it.
How does Adam feel about wizards?
He doesn’t believe in them…for example, our oldest niece gave him the first Harry Potter book for his Birthday the year it first came out. He tried to read it…like four or five pages and that was that. And, I know that he struggled with the idea with the entire Harry Potter series and all of the kids of the entire freaking world going gaga over it…
I was just joking about it because of the link with the question.
I kind of knew it by his response for the Simpson’s quote of the day, where Flanders was stating that Harry Potter and his little friends will be burning in hell.
At least we both got a chuckle out of it.
just wanted to offer this up encase you wanted an update on the whole smurf situation
http://www.sliceofscifi.com/2010/06/16/usa-today-offers-first-look-at-the-smurfs/