Posted on 12/19/2006 3:55:01 AM PST by Kaslin
Santa must be accepted by faith and later that faith destroyed ...
Jesus is also initially accepted by faith ... and later supported and fortified.
Your ball.
Shows the type of people who make up the anti-Christmas crowd, just a bunch of miserable prix who are only happy when they get others to join in their misery !!!
Exactly!
This fella looks like a happy/fun guy and I'm sure the kids LOVE having a bus driver who looks like Santa and wears the hat. I wish he'd go ahead and wear an entire Santa suit just to really PI$$ OFF that one "offended" parent.
And what exactly bothered the child about a hat?
One July when my son was eight, he said, "Mom, if I ask you a question, will you tell me the truth?" "Of course, son," I replied. He then asked if Santa was real or was I Santa Claus. He caught me totally off guard, but I thought about it a moment and indeed, told him the truth. You wouldn't believe the size of the tears that started rolling down his cheeks.
Congratulations to you and your husband!
FWIW, 22 years ago, my wife and I decided to not lie to our daughter about Santa Claus (or anything else that concerned her). After she was born, we kept that promise, based on the premise that we wanted her to be able to trust us in all things. We told her the Santas in the malls and elsewhere were kind men who liked to make kids happy.
Young children believe in all things magical. From the day they are born things seem to magically appear around them. Believing in Santa is no different. When the child gets a little older logic starts to take hold, but most kids will willingly suspend their disbelief for a year or two just to enjoy the show.
When it comes time to tell them Santa isn't real, tell them in a way that lets them in on the secret. Kids love to be part of the adults secret and knowing something younger children don't.
Yes, I am seeing many more lights this year.
It's only a matter of time before the grinches start attacking those too.
BTW I sent a bunch of emails to TJMaxx last year because they had Happy Holidays and Happy Hannukha signs but no Merry Christmas signs. This year the employees are wearing big buttons that say Merry Christmas. (No Merry Christmas signs that I could see though.)
But do the bosses have the right to arbitrarily change the policy from day to day with no notice? If the hat has been acceptable every December for years, does he have a reasonable expectation that his employer will not arbitrarily direct a new policy at him alone because of an inane complaint of one parent?
The kids usually catch on sometime around age 6 or 7, either because they get told by another kid or just figure it out for themselves.
When asked, we told our kids 2 things:
1) Yes, Santa does exist, but he doesn't look like the pictures. He looks like your parents, who love you very much.
2) Now that they know about Santa, they shouldn't spoil the magic for the younger kids. It's a grown-up secret.
They seemed to take it quite well when presented that way.
Is he fiction? I thought he was a Christian saint. In any case, he always seems to make it to my home on Christmas.
Of course he's a saint - but he's long dead and in heaven - not here on earth still delivering parents. My husband is concerned with lying to our children about someone who doesn't exist. (anymore on earth)
Oh goodness. This should say 'presents.'
"DEAR EDITOR: I am 8 years old.
"Some of my little friends say there is no Santa Claus.
"Papa says, 'If you see it in THE SUN it's so.'
"Please tell me the truth; is there a Santa Claus?
"VIRGINIA O'HANLON.
"115 WEST NINETY-FIFTH STREET."
VIRGINIA, your little friends are wrong. They have been affected by the skepticism of a skeptical age. They do not believe except [what] they see. They think that nothing can be which is not comprehensible by their little minds. All minds, Virginia, whether they be men's or children's, are little. In this great universe of ours man is a mere insect, an ant, in his intellect, as compared with the boundless world about him, as measured by the intelligence capable of grasping the whole of truth and knowledge.
Yes, VIRGINIA, there is a Santa Claus. He exists certainly as love and generosity and devotion exist, and you know that they abound and give to your life its highest beauty and joy. Alas! How dreary would be the world if there were no Santa Claus! It would be as dreary as if there were no VIRGINIAS. There would be no childlike faith then, no poetry, no romance to make tolerable this existence. We should have no enjoyment, except in sense and sight. The eternal light which childhood fills the world would be extinguished.
Not believe in Santa Claus! You might as well not believe in fairies! You might get your papa to hire men to watch in all the chimneys on Christmas Eve to catch Santa Claus, but even if they did not see Santa Claus coming down, what would that prove? Nobody sees Santa Claus, but that is no sign that there is no Santa Claus. The most real things in the world are those that neither children nor men can see. Did you ever see fairies dancing on the lawn? Of course not, but that's no proof that they are not there. Nobody can conceive or imagine all the wonders there are unseen and unseeable in the world.
You tear apart the baby's rattle and see what makes the noise inside, but there is a veil covering the unseen world which not the strongest man, nor even the united strength of all the strongest man that ever lived, could tear apart. Only faith, fancy, poetry, love, romance can push aside that curtain and view and picture the supernal beauty and glory beyond. Is it all real? Ah, VIRGINIA, in all this world there is nothing else real and abiding. No Santa Claus! Thank GOD! He lives, and he lives forever. A thousand years from now, nay, ten times ten thousand years from now, he will continue to make glad the heart of childhood.
--Francis Pharcellus, New York Sun, 1897
Rosie O's alma mater.............Commack.
"Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus" brings tears every time I read it.
But imagine the PC uproar if it were published today for the first time!
"when he goies out to the supermarket"
How, exactly, does a rabbi goy out to the supermarket?
Did you miss these parts?
-- snip --
The Bayport resident says he has been wearing his furry red-and-white hat every December since he started working for the Baumann and Sons bus company, which transports students in the Commack School District, five years ago.
-- snip --
Mott said he was told that a parent of a child complained to the district about Mott's headgear, saying that the child doesn't believe in Santa Claus and was bothered by the hat.
It doesn't look like his bosses set any standarts when they hired him or whenever he wore the Santa hat the first time
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