“Is that Jesus?”

Some years ago, friends of ours decided not to tell their kids much about Santa Claus, only to tell them about Jesus, and the real meaning of Christmas. Fine. Until one day they were walking through the mall just before Christmas and their young son got his first glimpse of Santa Claus causing him to point and ask, somewhat awe-struck, “Is that Jesus?” Evidently his logic was that he’d never seen this guy before and he knew Jesus came at Christmas time. Those were the days when we referred to him as “the jolly fat pagan” as a slight on the commercialism of Christmas. Now we have kids of our own, are slightly less self-righteous, and have therefore gone all soft – and when I say “we” I mean that the negative bits refer to me and positive bits refer to my wife. Don’t worry, the kids know the difference between Jesus and Santa Claus: they only actually saw one of them at the Santa Claus Parade this year. Anyway, all that preamble as an excuse to point you to the Scared of Santa photo gallery (a link I found today on Dave Hopkins’ Blog).