Fundamentalist Scrabble

Sitting in my navy-blue plastic chair leaning forward with elbows propped upon my pressed-wooden desk, I listened eagerly to my fifth grade teacher and watched as she spelled S...A...N...T...A. on the white marker board. (We were high tech. No chalk here.) All eyes were on her as she proceeded to scramble the letters to spell another word directly beneath the first--S...A...T...A...N. Satan. I don't remember anything else said that day in class, or really the whole year for that matter, but that display stuck with me.
In recent months I have received a lot of flack because of a statement I made that I did not plan on ever teaching my future children about the existence of Santa Claus. Yes, I think that my education in fifth grade on the subject was ridiculous. No, I do not think that Santa is equivalent to Satan. My reasons are much different. The main argument made to me regarding the subject was that teaching about Santa Claus would give my children a since of imagination that would be lacking without it. This is my maini point of disagreement.
I believe Christmas is a time to celebrate the greatest show of imagination the world has ever seen--God becoming man, or even more--God becoming infant. Reindeer, elves, snowmen, and a jolly old man delivering presents every year make for a pretty good story, but compared to the story of Jesus, I think it is like comparing The Davinci Code to The Odyssey or to the other great epics. It's not that I am opposed to Santa Claus; it's just that his story is a distraction, a big distraction, from The Story. The problem is that the great story has become common, and the story that is somewhat common is now seen as imaginative. I hear as many songs about jingle bells and winter wonderlands as I do about the wonder of God incarnate. Where is our imagination?
Perhaps you're just hearing the rantings of a guy who never got a single present from Santa, but perhaps there is a greater story than that of Santa Claus that needs to be told, that needs to be heard.