Podcast: Teaching Your Kids the Real Meaning of Christmas (William Smith)

December 20, 2021 by: Crossway

This article is part of the The Crossway Podcast series.

Celebrating Christmas as a Family

In today's episode, William Smith offers parents simple advice for viewing the holiday season as a special opportunity to point our kids’ hearts to their Savior.

Parenting with Words of Grace

Parenting with Words of Grace

William P. Smith

Offering practical guidance for grace-filled communication in the midst of the craziness of everyday life, Parenting with Words of Grace will help you speak in ways that reflect the grace God has shown to you in the gospel.

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Topics Addressed in This Interview:

00:54 - Advice for Myself as a Young Parent

Matt Tully
Bill, thank you so much for joining us today on The Crossway Podcast.

William Smith
Matt, it’s my pleasure. Thank you.

Matt Tully
Maybe before we get going, obviously Christmas is right around the corner and we’re going to be talking about ideas for ways that parents can think about helping their kids to appreciate Christmas for what it really is—the real significance that’s there. It’s really a glorious season for us as Christians. Before we get into that, I wonder if you could tell us a little bit about yourself and your own family. How many kids do you have? How old are they now? What does your family life look like?

William Smith
My wife and I have just passed our thirtieth anniversary, which seems unbelievable that she has still stayed with me and continues to be gracious and kind. Our three kids are in the range between twenty-five down to twenty-years-old, so we’re in that full-on launch stage. It’s been really amazing to me that they keep coming back and asking questions. There’s absolutely no guarantee of that when you have them and you’re raising them. You realize that a relationship is two ways and that it’s not simply what you want but it’s offering to them something that they might actually want as well. Obviously, our kids are normal. We went through a lot of rocky patches with them, but we’re just really enjoying this stage of our lives.

Matt Tully
I’m a young parent and my wife and I have three young kids, and it’s almost a cliche to hear people talk about how the time goes so fast and you look back and say, I can’t believe my kids are twenty and thirty and out of the house. And yet, it seems like it’s true. I can already sense that a little bit with my own kids (my oldest is nine), just how the time starts to fly by. I guess I wonder if you have observed that? What would you say to a younger version of yourself as a parent now that you’ve seen those years go by and now your kids are moving out?

William Smith
It really is amazing. It’s funny you say that your one is nine because when our oldest turned nine I thought, Oh my goodness! We’ve had her half as much as we will. This is going so quickly. It happens literally one hour at a time. The hours are so full because you’re doing so much in order just to take care of them that I think you tend not to notice how quickly the hours and the days and the years run. What would I say to my younger self? I think maybe two things as I’ve reflected back. One is just how important all the little moments are. Again, they get lost because you’re trying to clean up the milk that got spilled and take care of the cat and make sure that someone gets off to soccer practice and where are my cleats and all the rest of that. But each of those little moments is an opportunity to build a relationship or to destroy a relationship. I was not nearly as aware of that as I wish I had been. So that would be the downside of what I wish. The other side is just how much the goodness of living with someone for years and years and years is. Redemption means that there’s always another chance. Even when I’ve blown it huge and made a terrific mess out of connecting with my kids—or not connecting—the grace of God that I experience is something that I can then rely on to go back to them and offer them a chance at redeveloping the relationship.

04:52 - Family Christmas Traditions

Matt Tully
When your kids were younger, were there any Christmas traditions that your family did that you and your wife conceptualized and thought of specifically to try to help your kids to appreciate the “real” reason for the season around Christmas?

William Smith
That’s one that I think really the further back that you can start that in December I think the better off you are so that it normalizes what it is that we’re looking forward to. We can enjoy the parties and we can enjoy the gifts and those things, but really just continuing to build in the sense of who Christ is and why he came—our need of him coming and also the glory that he did come. There was one tradition that we fell into. I wish I could say that we were intentional, but as I’ve served as a pastor, Christmas Day was always very packed. What we started to do was to hold our Christmas Day celebration more on Christmas Eve. What that did—surprisingly, which was also somewhat due to the kid’s grandparents living further away and so Christmas was just a meet and greet and run and race kind of a day—

Matt Tully
Which is, I'm sure, the experience of many people. If you have grandparents, or maybe two grandparents, living in the same town, all of a sudden Christmas Day is just packed full of moving people around from here to there.

William Smith
Yes. So we would wake up and we would hold our gift-giving on Christmas Eve. The way that we did that is we would read a passage of Scripture and then we would sing a couple of hymns. That’s a tradition that we have continued so that each person in the family brings one thing—either it’s a passage of Scripture to read, or it’s a song that they want to sing. We share that time of worship first. Then we would open gifts and have our special brunch. And then there’s actually the afternoon to play with the kids rather than pack them in the car and then run away. It also ended, then, with us going to the Christmas Eve service. So what we ended up looking forward to all day long was actually meeting with Christ. That changed the whole dynamic from, Let’s go to church to get this over with so that we can go to sleep maybe and then have the real thing—the gifts. That’s a tradition that we’ve really appreciated.

07:33 - Christmas Is a Different Part of Normal

Matt Tully
That gets to this dynamic that I’m sure all the parents listening right now have thought about and have maybe even wrestled with and felt conflicted about: How are we helping our kids to focus on the right things and to not be so obsessed with presents and gifts and the decorations of Christmas and maybe miss (or undervalue) the real significance? I want to dig into that a little bit, but one of the things that you said a couple of minutes ago stuck with me. You mentioned the importance of these daily, life-on-life conversations—the small moments. When it comes to Christmas, what’s the balance between emphasizing and putting a lot of thought and care into these more formal traditions or formal moments of pointing our kids towards Christ compared to just trying to be intentional in the everyday conversations around the season? Do you see those as two different things to emphasize, or are they kind of one in the same? How would you talk about that?

William Smith
That’s a great question. I think I would say that Christmas is a different part of normal, if I can put it that way. The normal is sort of a Deuteronomy talk with your kids constantly about who the Lord is and about how they fit into his world so that you’re always tying every aspect of life back to some characteristic of him or something that he has given us to do. You can spend your day with your kids talking about chores and homework and playing soccer. Or, you can connect what chores and God have to do with each other. What does playing soccer and God have to do with each other? How does schoolwork engage with who God has made us to be and the responsibilities he has given to us? We tried to have those conversations constantly. We just had a family vacation that we have not had for a long time since our daughter went off to college. Finally, all six of us were together and we were talking about some of the issues of the day, how they’re really big and difficult to wrap your head around.

Matt Tully
Are you talking about big, controversial kinds of political issues or cultural issues?

William Smith
Exactly. The ones that we didn’t talk about when they were in the house because they just weren’t on the radar anywhere. I mentioned to the kids that honestly, I didn’t know what we would do. My one son spoke up and said, I do. You would have done the exact same thing that you did already, and that is we would have talked about it . . . a lot. It wasn’t in a negative Oh Dad, you’re always talking, but it was a This is how we lived the Christian life.

Matt Tully
Unpack that a little bit for us because I would imagine there could be a parent listening right now who says, Yeah, in theory I like the idea of trying to connect the day-to-day realities of life as a family with these bigger ideas about the gospel and about Jesus and God, but I don’t know how to do that. I worry that’s going to feel awkward or forced or like I’m Jesus juking my kids at every moment. How do you think about actually doing that in practice?

William Smith
Yes, it’s awkward because I didn’t grow up in a family that did this, and so it was new. It was clumsy, the vocabulary didn’t feel like it fit, I felt like I was searching for things, I felt like there were times where I would start a conversation and end up in a cul de sac somewhere. I learned over time that’s okay. What does the book of Proverbs talk about? It talks about how the wise person thinks about what they say and realize, Okay, I need to put in a lot more time and thought. When I end up not really knowing where to go, that’s an opportunity not to stop and say, Well, this doesn’t work, but to consider: Who can I talk to? What can I search on the Internet?—those kids of things—so that I can come back to my kids. I actually just had something like that. One of our kids called us and said, Hey, here’s these things that are going on in my life. We hung up the phone when we were done and I thought, I don’t know what to say about that. But then I thought about it and came back the other day and said, Would you be interested in hearing some of what I’ve been thinking about? And they said yes. That then produced a different part of that same conversation. So, that would be one thing I would say, The second is that Jesus makes it really, on one level, very simple. Everything that we do, in some sense, has to relate to loving God and loving our neighbor. In that sense, I know the answer before I start. If all I can get to is love God or love neighbor, that at least gives my kids a framework for understanding the world from God’s perspective. I remember one time it was the afternoon and our son was getting ready to go play soccer—an activity that is sort of his thing. I forget now how old he was—maybe somewhere between seven and nine-years-old. I said, Why are we going to go play soccer today? What’s your goal? He looked at me like I had lost my mind, and he said, To have fun. I wanted to poke a little bit at him, so I said, If that’s the biggest goal we have today, I’m not going. Try again. He’s used to me, so we stumbled around with this for a little while until we got to the place where we said there are other people out there that I’m actually connecting with, and my job today is not simply to run for the glory of me, but can I help the rest of us actually function well together as a team? At that point, I think okay, great! That’s something of a Christian worldview, and that’s what I’m looking for. Can I help you realize that this is not a neutral world, but that there is a God who has created it. He’s created it for good purposes, but the fall has screwed all that up. But Jesus has come to redeem. If I can keep some of those pieces in my conversation, I think I’m doing what I’m supposed to be doing.

Matt Tully
You were just describing the normal way that we think about this, but then you made a comment early on that Christmas is maybe a special season of normal. How would you unpack that a little bit more?

William Smith
You have different pieces beginning at Thanksgiving, or earlier, that draw people’s attention. What are those? They are the festivities like the decorations, the entertainment (the parties), and the gifts—those would be the real quick three. Can you draw connecting lines between why we engage in these things and who our God is in a way that is not forced or strange? C. S. Lewis has this great illustration about when you see the sun beam, trace the sun beam back to the sun. So, can you find the little hints and bits in our current festivities that point beyond themselves and point to a bigger God? And easy one: people put lights up around their houses in a lot of the country. That’s a little odd. Why do we do that in the middle of winter? It’s not a big stretch to point back to the original lights—the star and the other kinds of things that announced Christ’s birth. In that sense, you're saying there is something here—even though it’s hidden and layered under all kinds of different consumeristic economic kinds of things—there’s something here that when we walk up and down the street, we can remember there is a specialness to this season that is more than just pretty. It is pretty, but it’s also the breaking in of light into a dark world. Or, you can come at it from the other direction. There’s all that excitement and all the hype about the presents that we’re going to get. You want to do this gently because you don’t want to be the crushing, depressing person, but you do want to talk to your kids a little bit and say, You really want X, and I hear that. In the right world, when X is in it’s right size, there’s a goodness to X. But if we put too much on X and if we allow X to get too big, it just will fall apart. Can you ever remember a time when you set your heart on having the doll, the bike, the ball—whatever—and how you had to have it and you yearned for it with all your heart and made mom and dad nuts. It was the only thing you talked about. How long did that stay exciting to you? Parents have to remember their own history and their own experience with life in this world. There are good things and good gifts from our God that we can enjoy, but if we make them God-sized gifts and try to replace him with them, they won’t hold up. They’re suddenly no longer fun.

17:31 - The Joy of Giving Gifts

Matt Tully I know for me as a parent, I’ve often felt two impulses when it comes to gifts. That’s obviously such a big topic for Christmas. On the one hand, it’s so important to me that my kids appreciate the real significance of Christmas and that they don’t get so distracted by these toys that they want and that I’m getting for them. I can see how easily they can be distracted from the gospel—this intangible truth that they can’t hold, play with, or see right in front of them. On the other hand, I love giving my kids gifts. I love their anticipation and excitement. I love seeing the joy on their faces as they play. So as a parent, I can feel a little bit of that tension of wanting to hold these two things together, but I don’t want to let one totally subsume the other. Have you ever wrestled with that tension? Is that a valid way of thinking about this? What advice do you have for helping parents to navigate that?

William Smith
Absolutely. I also want my kids to enjoy their lives and to anticipate. That’s part of the fun I think. I hope I don’t step on too many toes with this! There is sort of the quick out which is God gave us Jesus, so we give each other gifts. There’s a thin analogy there, but it doesn’t fully work for me. God gave us Jesus because of our need for a renewed relationship with him, and the gifts that I give you do not renew anything in that kind of way. I find it more helpful maybe to go to the place where we learn in Scripture that it truly is better to give than to receive, and to talk to my kids about why do we give gifts? Because it is better to give than to receive. I love the joy and anticipation that you have, the fun that this is for you, and I want to share with you the gift of giving—even more than I want you to share the package that you’re going to unwrap. So, could we also learn that piece during Christmas time? How can you and I work together to think about your siblings, your mother, other relatives, and friends? I want to put time and energy and resources into helping you be able to experience the joy of giving, not just the fun of getting.

20:23 - Managing Christmas Morning

Matt Tully
I know one thing that I have often thought about when it comes to presents with our kids is thinking about how Christmas morning often works. Oftentimes we want to read a passage of Scripture, we want to sing a hymn (as you and your family do), and we want to pray together. But then looming in the background, there are all of these presents that we’re waiting to get to. It’s hard for parents, especially those with younger kids, to help our kids stay focused on the things that we’re trying to have them focus on when there’s this powerful force of presence that’s in the background. You mentioned the idea of celebrating some of that stuff the day before, leading up to a Christmas Eve service, but do you have any other advice that you would offer to parents for very practically helping their young kids? Assuming they’re not going to get rid of presents altogether, how do we help our young kids keep that in perspective?

William Smith
Not getting rid of presents altogether and wrestling with how do we communicate these high level truths to a three-year-old? I think, in a lot of ways, you inculcate that physically. What does that mean? It means, no, we really are going to read the Bible story first. When the kids were small, we had picture Bible story books—something that would be a little more age appropriate. We did not make a forty-five minute worship service before presents.

Matt Tully
So, you’re saying it’s okay to be age appropriate.

William Smith
I think you have to be. You and I are going to live forever. That means that at our greatly advanced ages, we’re still infants and God still condescends to us. So yes, I think we try to not dumb things down, but make them accessible. Then I would say we have had a tradition of one person opening up a gift and the rest of us joining in, so we’re watching instead of just having the mad mayhem.

Matt Tully
The free for all.

William Smith
Exactly. Something where we actually get to participate in the giving and in the joy. We’ve always done brunch afterward, so it’s tried to say that the community of our family is really the icing on the cake, or however you want to say it. That’s the thing that we’re moving toward. And then we want to make sure that we spend some time actually playing with the kids, not just giving them things, but, again, making this a relational activity.

23:01 - Putting an Emphasis on Family and Community

Matt Tully
You mentioned family, and obviously that’s such an important idea and concept. Many of us love Christmas precisely because of that family dynamic. For others, I’m sure the holiday season can bring with it associations of pain and sadness when maybe family isn’t what it is supposed to be for them. How do you think about—especially as we talk to our kids—the emphasis on family that is so often present at Christmas, along with an emphasis on looking outward and wanting to serve others, whether in our broader church community or the community around where we live?

William Smith
I remember one time my wife took gifts to some of the people in the neighborhood. We have a Christian neighbor who would take cookies around the neighborhood. Just something small. Something that doesn’t make anybody feel obligated or weird to receive, but just a Hey, I’m thinking about you gift, and realizing that it’s not just all about us. There was one thing that my family growing up did that really did stand out to me. We would go to Christmas Eve service, and then we went to visit this older couple across the street. We would sit with them for a half hour or an hour, which, if you’re little, that’s a long time! They couldn’t get out and go anyway, so it was a way of saying, We will come to them. Obviously, there was interaction throughout the rest of the year, but this was a special way of connecting with them. It was just something that says we’re not an island. That is where I think a Christmas Eve service really is important, even when the kids aren’t necessarily understanding what this is, it’s a way of saying, No, this is not an individual thing. This is the community of God’s people coming together as well.

Matt Tully
It also signals to them, even if they don’t fully understand, that there is something bigger going on. There is something more than just what we’re experiencing under the tree with all those presents.

William Smith
Yes. And again, when you’re working with two, three, four, or five-year-olds, a lot of their life is physically mediated. No, we’re going. The primary component is, You will be there, and you will experience the community. And we will give a couple more words of explanation.

Matt Tully
I think that can be really encouraging for parents of young kids when they feel like, Well, I clearly haven’t done a good job teaching my kids because they don’t really want to go to this service. They just want to stay home. I’ve failed and haven’t cultivated a love for this like I wish I would have. But sometimes just getting them there and making it that physical priority is what we’re called to do as parents.

William Smith
Yes, and here’s the hard balance: I am called to offer and present to my kids a world that is governed by a good God who is radically willing to do whatever it takes so that they can be with him in his presence. I can’t make them love that, so I have to create a home environment that points to him, that invites and draws them, but I can’t force that heart change in them. I think that’s the same things we’re doing when we take them to church on Sunday and to these special services. We’re saying, Here’s every reason for you to buy into this, and at the end of the day you will make your own decision.

27:00 - Parenting Is an Invitation

Matt Tully
You have this line in your book, Parenting with Words of Grace, that says, “Parenting is an invitation.” Unpack that a little bit more for us, and how does that fit into what we’ve been talking about with Christmas?

William Smith
In parenting, what am I looking for? I am looking for a relationship. That’s what I really want. I want to have a connection with my kids if they want it. I recognize it takes two people. I think that gets lost in our minds. You and I, at this point, we’re developing a relationship and we’re doing that primarily through words. I’m offering words and you’re offering words back. There’s understanding and clarification. We’re deciding, Do we want more of this? And maybe we will, or maybe we won’t. We forget that with our kids. We forget that there is not a required love in them for us. They are to honor and respect us, but that’s from the Lord; that’s not from us. So, what we’re trying to do as parents is communicate to them, *It would be good for you to have a relationship with me. It would be good because I love you and I care about you and I want the best for you. That means sometimes I’m going to be a little stronger, sometimes I’m going to be a little bit more patient and kind. But all the ways in which I engage with you—whether that’s in the discipline direction or more in the gentle and kind direction—it’s all for your good, and my hope is that you will see that and you’ll decide that you want more of that.

Matt Tully
Do you think parents ever perhaps take for granted that relationship and what that looks like is we don’t engage in the conversation that is necessary to build that?

William Smith
I do think we take it for granted. I think we expect it. After all, they don’t really exist without us and we provide everything for them and we allow them to interrupt our lives, so we think it just makes sense that they will give us something back.

Matt Tully
Of course you love me!

William Smith
Yes, and we forget that they are their own individual persons. We might try to manipulate them into a relationship, or bribe them or threaten them if they’re out of line, but none of that is the same as them freely offering their love back to us. In that respect, I think what we’re doing is we’re offering a connection with them in a very similar and analogous way to how God offers us a connection with himself. So, we see what he’s done throughout time and history, we see how he’s engaged with people—even when they’ve turned their backs on him, and we look at that and we say, If that’s who you really are, I do want a relationship with you even if I don’t fully understand you, even if there are things that you’ve done and said that I am confused by and not always happy with. I see your heart and I want more of you.

Matt Tully
I can’t stop coming back to this idea that this invitation that we as parents are trying to offer to our kids—to use the words that you use in the book—it’s embedded in our conversations with them. A while back we were talking about young kids at Christmas and I was even struck by how even at a young age, a pretty young age when we know that they’re not going to understand some things or get the nuance that we might want to convey at some point, nevertheless, there is perhaps maybe more room and more need for real conversation with our kids—really listening to them, really engaging with them, asking them questions to help them understand. I know for me at least as a parent, it can be tempting to not go there with them when they’re young. You kind of think they don’t need that or you think it’s just inefficient. You kind of want them to sort of do what you ask them to do so you end up saying, Just do it because I told you to do it. I’m your dad and you need to listen to me. God says that—instead of reasoning with them a little bit. Do you think that’s part of what we’re called to do that maybe sometimes we forget?

William Smith
We forget, and we live in a world that is very full. At some point we just want them to go to bed, or we just want them to finish their peas and just give us a little bit of a break. That’s where I was going back to when you asked earlier what I wish I had known as a younger parent, and that is that those are the moments when I was communicating a lot to them. Let me just hang out there for a moment. I’m thinking about when Jesus says, “Out of the heart the mouth speaks.” In other words, every time you hear me talk, I’m telling you about me, and I’m telling you about what I love and what I value. In that telling and revealing of myself, I’m also telling you, Here’s where I think you fit into my world: You are here to make my life easy. I’m your father; listen to me. . . . You are here to make me feel needed: Is something not going well at school? Great! I’m all in! . . . You are here so that I can have a good reputation; therefore, I will never ask you to forgive me because I can’t afford to. So, out of what I value in my heart, that’s what you’re going to hear. Or, you’re going to hear, I will sacrifice for you gladly because I see that’s what you need. Or, I will take the time when I would prefer to watch my video to hear about what happened at school today. . . . I will stop what I’m doing to say, ‘I don’t know how to think about that with you, but let’s start wandering in a conversation together’. In that, I’m saying you’re not a cog that fits into my machine; you’re a valued image of God and I want you to know that. The way that I let you know that is how I treat you with my words.

33:11 - What about Santa?

Matt Tully
That’s so helpful and encouraging for us as parents to think about. I think that’s what we’re called to do in our parenting. I would be remiss if I didn’t ask you a question that I’m sure everyone has been waiting on pins and needles to hear you speak to, and that has to do with the issue of Santa. How do you think about Santa? What did you do with your kids? What path did you take when it comes to Santa? Then, how do you navigate other families who might choose a different path as a parent?

William Smith
That’s a great question. We took a page, frankly, out of my mother’s book. She said, I didn’t want to lie to you guys, and I didn’t want to communicate something to you that at some point in time I would have to say wasn’t true and I knew it. If you follow that logic just a little way down the road—I want to be gentle with some of the listeners who maybe have done this—if you’re telling them about Santa and you’re telling them about Jesus, and at some point you have to bring it back and say that Santa isn’t real, I think you’ve undermined your credibility with what you’ve told them and communicated about Christ. So, I don’t think it’s a great idea. I do think, however, that there is a very important place where you sit down with your kids—and you can do this with young kids—and say, Some people think that Santa brings toys and they tell their kids that Santa brings toys. Mommy and Daddy are actually the ones who bring your toys and those come from us.

Matt Tully
Give us the credit please!

William Smith
Some people believe that, and out of love and respect to them, you don’t need to tell them what you know. You’re not hiding things from your friends, but you’re not going to out them—again, I’m struggling with language here—you don’t want to be the cause for why they now have a problem with their parents. So, out of love for your friends, this is not something you need to talk with them about.

Matt Tully
What about just enjoying Santa as part of the holiday—kind of a make believe, fun part of the holiday? Or better yet, a figure with historical roots that we could talk about. Is that something that you guys did with your kids, even if you didn’t tell them that he was real?

William Smith
The fun part of Santa we just sort of dodged, to be very frank. I think we had one or two conversations about the historical person and where that came from. I think that there’s more wisdom there.

Matt Tully
Well Bill, thank you for helping us as parents to think about this important time of the year and our kids and helping to shape our kids around the truth of the gospel. We appreciate you taking the time.

William Smith
It was great. Thanks, Matt.

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