The Truth About Christmas!

Our Princess and I had a deep discussion about Christmas, Santa and Jesus Monday as we put the last of the ornaments on the tree. We've never said that her Christmas presents come from Santa. As a matter of fact, we've always told her they come from Maga and Papa, even though they only say XOXO...but somehow she has gotten the idea of Santa Claus, from friends, I suppose. We've just never addressed it, I suppose thinking that if we never said anything, she would never ask? Naive I know. We just didn't want to make it official, you know? We didn't want her to be the brat at school who blurts out that there was no Santa Claus. We also didn't want her to believe in Santa Claus only to realize when she was older that we had lied to her. We want Christmas to be about Jesus, which we do push strongly at home.
So I sat down with her while we put up the Nativity under the tree. I told her about St. Nicholas, who was a man who loved Jesus so much that he spent his life doing good works. St. Nicholas loved children and often gave them gifts. He also helped the poor by leaving anonymous gifts(some new vocab for Our Princess) and often helped his neighbors in need. I explained that he did this to celebrate Jesus and his birth, not to celebrate himself. So he wouldn't want us to make Christmas about him, but about Jesus. Then we talked about why Jesus was born and why he was special. I told her about the story of Jesus' birth and Mary and Joseph and the angels coming to sing to the shepherds and the visit from the Magi...
Afterward we went through her toys and bagged up some that she doesn't often play with that are still good and took them up to the ministry center to be handed out when children come in. She was pretty good about giving them away; Our Fairy was a little (ok, a lot) hesitant, but she's still three... And when we went last night to work at the Ministry Center and she was able to hand one of her dolls to a little girl who had the biggest smile on her face, I think she realized the joy of sharing. Again, Our Fairy just didn't handle it well...we'll work on that.
I'm not sure how much she retained, but the explanation seemed to satisfy her enough. I did explain that it wasn't our place to tell other children about Santa, that we had to leave that up to other mommys and daddys...we'll see if it works.