The Noble Lie (and what we do with Santa)

Read time: 3 minutes

Welcome to issue #034 of Unicorn Parents. Each week, I share practical insights and reflections to help you build a profitable business without missing the magic at home. If you’re serious about winning at work while raising great kids, you’ve come to the right place. This is a community built for ambitious parents who want both.

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Santa Claus has become a hot topic in our house.

Not because our kids asked for more presents.
But because their preschool asked us to teach them about Santa.

And suddenly, we were forced into a conversation we hadn’t planned on having yet.

Because Santa… isn’t what Christmas is about.

And yet—he’s everywhere.

At school.
At the mall.
In books, songs, decorations, and expectations.

So the real question isn’t whether our kids will encounter Santa.

It’s how we talk about a fictional character who sits at the center of a very real cultural moment—one that mixes joy, imagination, generosity, and… commerce.

And underneath all of it is a harder parenting question we don’t talk about enough:

What do we do when a story isn’t true—but isn’t entirely evil either?

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Plato called this kind of story a noble lie.

A story that isn’t literally true, but is told to promote certain values:

• Good behavior.

• Generosity.

• Magic.

• Wonder.

• Togetherness.

Santa is framed as harmless.
Even helpful.

And for many families, he is.

But for us, something still felt off.

Because Christmas, at its core, isn’t about being watched.
Or earning gifts.
Or consumption disguised as reward.

It’s about incarnation—the belief that Jesus entered the world in human form.
About presence.
About a God who came near—not to judge behavior, but to offer love, grace, and redemption .

So we found ourselves stuck between two options that both felt wrong:

1. Reject Santa outright, and risk turning Christmas into a constant act of cultural resistance

2. Receive Santa uncritically, and let the loudest story win by default

Neither sat well.

A helpful framework comes from Josh Howerton, pastor of Lakepointe Church. Christians ought to respond to culture in one of three ways:

Receive, Reject, or Redeem.

That framing gave us language for what we were actually trying to do.

It revealed a third option we hadn’t fully named yet.

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Before Santa became a global brand, he was a real person.

St. Nicholas was a 4th-century Christian bishop known for radical generosity, especially toward the poor and vulnerable.

One story tells of Nicholas secretly giving gold to a struggling family so their daughters wouldn’t be sold into slavery.
He gave anonymously.
Quietly.
Without recognition.

No lists.
No surveillance.
No transactions.

Just generosity flowing from love.

Santa didn’t start as a lie.
He started as a witness.

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So instead of receiving Santa as-is—or rejecting him entirely—we’re choosing to redeem him.

That means a few intentional shifts:

• We tell our kids Santa is a story inspired by a real man who loved God and gave generously

• We emphasize giving more than getting

• We keep the wonder—but ground it in truth

• We refuse to make Christmas about moral performance

We don’t say, “Santa’s watching.”
We say, “God loves you.”

We don’t say, “Be good so you get.”
We say, “We give because we’ve been given so much.”

And we hold imagination with open hands—not as deception, but as preparation.

Because what kids remember later isn’t whether Santa was real.

It’s whether the people they trusted told them the truth in ways they could grow into.

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Why does this matter more than Santa?

Because this won’t be the last time our kids encounter a powerful story that isn’t quite true.

They’ll meet stories about success.
About identity.
About happiness.
About what makes a life meaningful.

Some will need to be rejected.
Some received.
Some redeemed.

We’re trying to form people.

And formation rarely comes from loud reactions.
It comes from quiet, intentional choices made again and again.

That’s how we’re navigating Santa this year.

Not perfectly.
But thoughtfully.

If you’re wrestling with it too, you’re not late.
You’re not wrong.
You’re just parenting in a culture full of competing stories.

And that’s the real work of parenting in a noisy world.

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