This week I’ll be covering some of the more dumb things I’ve ever done as a Children’s Pastor. Be sure to visit www.jonathancliff.com/tags/dumbthings to keep up with all the dumb-ness happening here this week!
Years ago I worked at a great church in Dallas, TX. Unfortunately for this church, I did many of my dumbest things while there…
We had planned a special Christmas outreach event. It included families in the most need, many free Christmas gifts, a Christmas lunch, Christmas songs, a huge Christmas tree, and last but not least a visit from Santa Clause. Now many of my more conservative Kidmin friends are already seeing the red flags here. I can feel your thoughts towards me, but trust me. Santa Clause was not the issue. The issue was the color of skin of this Santa Clause.
I had let myself be talked into allowing Santa Clause to make a visit. Now let me say that I in no way have a problem with a black santa. I endorse and fully appreciate the asian Santa’s, african-american Santa’s, and white rosy cheeked Santa’s; and in no way would I care one way or the other what color Santa’s skin was. So when we marched out Santa at the end and offered to let kids from the lower-income areas of town have their picture taken with him we ran into a problem. Nobody wanted pictures with “Black Santa.” Let me be clear. I did not call him “Black Santa”, the kids called him that. Black, white, hispanic, and all varieties of kids refused to sit with “Black Santa.”
The event was a great success, but I’ll never shake the image of our “Black Santa” sitting in the corner all alone with kids keeping their distance and watching him closely to make sure he didn’t make any sudden moves…
