Is Santa really satan, does a carved pumpkin really do a disservice to our childern? Is culture, as is language to be caught up in the past?

This time of year we often hear some controversy about the celebration of Halloween, Thanksgiving, Easter and Christmas, are they Christian? are the pagan? are they harmful to our children? Are they really what we think they are or do we assume we know that one is pagan and one is Christian? Could it be that like our culture they are the accumulation of the secular, the Christian and the pagan? They, like we, are the results of the melting pot society we are. The only holidays that we have that aren't an accumulation of past cultures are the ones that are purely American. That would be the simple ones and 4th of July, you know Presidents day, MLK, Columbus and Labor days. They are purely celebrations of our history but the bigger holidays are complicated.

You can spend many an hours studying the pagan and Christian aspects of Easter, Christmas, Thanksgiving, yes Thanksgiving, no it is not the holiday we believe it to be about just Pilgrims and the kindly Native Americans, it has as much past history as the others. Is it really important why we celebrate them, yes and no, is the simple answer. Should we over think them? You can and are more than welcome to, but you should be fair to the holiday and really study it if you are going to pick it apart to that degree. Is there a purpose for looking for the evil in a holiday? Are you so little of faith that God can't make the good in any event the focal point, can't Halloween be just about kids having fun in a costume collecting candy? Can't Santa just be about the Christmas spirit and not be about Satan? Yes, I read the other day that Santa is Satan. I think that people have to much time on their hands, or have so little love in their lives that they look for the evil in the innocent. I am not saying that any of these holiday are without possible evil overtones from the past but why cling to the negative and the evil? why not shed it and see the child's wonder and fun in them. I am not copping out and allowing the devil to infiltrate my life. I have a choice to be overburdened with Satan or to allow God's glory to protect me from his evil. Besides nowhere in the bible did anyone show reverence for the birth of Christ once he was born, the bible is all about the celebration of his death and his rising from the dead, so is any observance for Christ's birth even biblical? 

You say but lying to your child is wrong, in the case of Santa. Yes, lying to my child would be wrong if it was a personal lie but it is not, it is a cultural lie. I know lying is lying. Okay, is Mickey Mouse a lie? Is Betsy Ross a lie, no she didn't really make the first flag? Is Big Bird a lie? Does Tinker Bell really fly and does Charlotte really spin webs to save piglets? George didn't chop down the cherry tree with such honesty. If you start to take out all the cultural lies of this life, where to begin?

I think that life is what you make of it, God has allowed us choice and has gifted us with salvation, if we but ask, and all the other stuff is just stuff.  You can spend precious time looking for the evil where none exists and you can separate your life to seclusion or you can live life in the time era God put you in.  Do I teach my child that Satan is drinking milk and cookies as he fills her stocking by allowing her to belief in Santa?  NO, I give her a moment of fantasy much like when I take her to see Tinker Bell in a theater and is either going to condemn her to hell, no.  Our lives are so warp speed in this day and age that a little fantasy in a child's life is not a bad thing.  I think teaching your child  some frivolity is not a sin, but not teaching them the reality of God and the evils of Satan at work in our lives is.  I think that gossip, drugs and immoral living is a much greater worry in a child's life. So if people have nothing better to do than condemning trick or treating, Santa and the Easter Bunny they must have conquered the evils of true sin in their lives so I am glad they are so right with God, and their salvation, that they have time to judge us that are just struggling to wake up daily and try to live for the Lord. ...... tomorrow.