Quote Originally Posted by miotas View Post
In a nutshell, your kids will thank you if you leave any religious education until they are at least of school age. Oh, and make sure you make it clear that they are just stories and they aren't actually real. I thought my scripture teacher was an idiot when I first figured it out.
Hmm, I think maybe the problem here is that you were being told that the Bible stories were literally real, as opposed to containing symbolic truths. True conversation from today:

"Daddy, Santa Claus isn't real." (Turns out someone at school was talkin' trash about Saint Nick.)
"That's not true. Santa Claus is a symbol."
"What's a symbol?"
"It's like an idea. Can you see love? Can you touch it?"
"No."
"But love is real, isn't it?"
"Yeah."
"So we use ideas and symbols to understand things like love."
"So Santa Claus is real?"
"No, he's a symbol."
[Long pause.]
"So who puts the presents under the tree?"

You get the idea. Kids are capable of distinguishing between the real and imaginary at a very early age. It's not too much of a leap to ask them to understand symbols and ideas. Heck, at this rate I'll be discussing Plato's Cave with my six-year-old pretty soon.

The real stumper, though, the one that nearly floored me, was when he innocently asked, "Is Christmas Jesus' birthday?"

You can imagine what ran through my mind. "No, it's the festival of Sol Invictus, co-opted by the early church in an attempt to mainstream Christianity in the Roman Empire." Um, no. How about, "See, there was a festival called Saturnalia ..." Nope. That won't fly. Let's try, "Jesus was probably born in the spring, but we celebrate on December 25th because we think it's funny." Definitely not. Jesu Criste, what am I going to tell this kid?

I finally settled on the weak response of, "That's the tradition."

Which of course prompted, "What's a tradition?" Ugh.