Here Comes Santa Clause

This Christmas season has certainly been different.  The weather, sights, sounds, gatherings, decorations, and pretty much everything else is new.  One thing that was the same was that Ryan had the opportunity to interact with a group of children at a local church.  That’s nothing new for him.  But, what the church wanted him to do was very different.

The day we got back from our Kenya trip, a local pastor came and asked Ryan to come on Sunday and be the Father Christmas for his church.  He explained that all Nigerian children know that Father Christmas and Baby Jesus are white and they had already promised the children the “real” Father Christmas.  

Now, in a decade of children’s ministry, we have never brought Santa into a church celebration.  We haven’t done Santa with our kids and we certainly haven’t done it with our ministry.  So, we were not really sure how to navigate this request.  In the end, we decided to just play along.  We decided that building and maitaining the relationship was more important than winning our cultural battle.  

When the day came to play the part, it was interesting.  We needed to be at the church at the start of their service so that Father Christmas could be a part of the children’s processional.  He and the children danced up the aisle and made their way to the choir area beside the stage.  They sat there for the 2.5 hour service.  The children sang a few carols during the choir time.  One of them was the 12 days of Christmas.  That was pretty entertaining.

After the service ended, it was Ryan’s turn to play the part and hand out the gifts.  First they lined up the children whose parents had given 200 Naira (about $1.30) to have a special present.  Those children received a hat and a bag which contained a hot meal of rice and a drink.  The children whose families had not given the money received only the meal.  That is something that our brains still don’t comprehend.  We struggle with seeing a group of children watch another group of children get a special gift while they don’t.  We don’t like it, but it really is the culture here.  There does not seem to be any sense of trying to make things fair or protecting the feelings of others.  It’s hard for our American minds to process.

The best part of the whole thing was having “Santa” drive our van to and from church.  We always draw attention because we drive a big van and we fill it with 7 white people.  You cannot imagine the looks we got when Santa was behind the wheel.  People were literally stopping and staring and pointing.  We laughed and laughed at all of the shocked faces.

Here's "Father Christmas" dancing with kids.

Happy with her hat!

This little guy plopped right down to eat his rice and green apple flavored milk drink.