what does Mum want with my tooth?

"The tooth fairy isn't made up.  She really exists!  I mean, it's not like your parents take your tooth."

The wisdom and logic of one of my daughter's seven-year-old friends.  Little blonde and brunette heads all nodded sagely along.  I mean, there really is only two ways to explain the missing teeth and miraculous money: parents or tooth fairy.  And we can't see any reason why the parents would want the teeth, can we ...?

I overheard this conversation without joining it.  There are all sorts of awkward ramifications in shattering the childhood illusions of children outside ones jurisdiction.  But it did get me thinking - what is my position on the tooth fairy or santa claus?  If I encourage my kids to believe in them, am I lying?  Will that jeopardise their later belief in Jesus?  Or is it all an innocent childhood stage that my kids will pass through unscathed, happy to have had some childhood magic to look back upon?

So, of course, I consulted the blogosphere.  What a variety of opinions!  There was an atheist blogger who worried that the tooth fairy and santa claus stories were somehow a trojan horse that would make it more likely that kids would believe in God.  There were Christian bloggers and commenters who worried that telling their kids about santa would cause them later to discard belief in God.  (Surely both can't be right!).  One mother is content to go along with her sons' imaginations (as she does for fictitious super heroes etc), and to use the result as raw material in the cut and thrust of raising kids.  And a number of atheist sites (here, here and here) airily proclaimed that the tooth fairy, santa claus, god and the easter bunny are all the same - inventions for which there is no rational evidence.

To my mind, there are two big issues that I need to sort out:

1. Truth-telling, and modelling truth-telling.
2. Giving my kids a reason for the hope that I have (see 1 Peter 3:15)

First: truth-telling.  I want to tell the truth, because only telling the truth will honour God.  I also want my children to be people of integrity and truth as they grow up.  This will have to inform how I approach the issue with my kids - I don't think I can tell them that the tooth fairy will turn up and give them money for their teeth. Is it different if they want to put a tooth under the pillow for the tooth fairy, and I replace the tooth with money: playing along?  What if the whole tooth fairy conversation is understood as imagination and make-believe, in the same manner that we play pirates or princesses?  I guess this is an issue that each parent (and each couple) must grapple with, focusing on the underlying principles of telling the truth and honouring God.  It will depend as much on the culture in my family as on the character of my children.

Secondly: the evidence.  I think that the atheist blogs have the solution to the problem half-right.  That is, they demand that a belief have a basis in evidence for it to be rational, and will discard the belief if not satisfied with the evidence.  In my opinion, they go wrong in claiming that there is no evidence for a belief in God.  There is ample evidence all around that God exists, and significant evidence in the historical record that Jesus of Nazareth is the Son of God and is one with God.  That he died and rose again to life.  This is material for another post, and many people have already dealt with this subject far better than I ever will (for example, Lee Strobel with his "Case for" series; Dr John Dickson's "The Christ Files"; the Centre for Public Christianity).

So I suppose, over the coming 9+ years of teeth loss in my family, I have the dual challenge of maintaining childhood magic for my children without lying to them; and giving them the evidential basis and critical thinking capacity to distinguish between the fairytales and the truth of the gospel.