Perils & Pleasures of Parenting: Nix St. Nick and Taste Wine

Two Seattle Times articles caught my attention recently within the same week. One told me that in Vienna, St. Nick is being X’d out of Christmas. The primary reason given was that he frightened the children. (I wondered how many even knew the original story of St. Nicholas.) The second article told me that in Paris educators plan to add wine education to curriculum for children. One of the reasons for this was the troubling thing for me. The wine industry was needing new marketing strategies. Of course they would also teach kids about the excesses of spirits.

On my morning walk today, I happened out just as mothers were scuttling their children into vans and off to school. As I passed by one house, kids were spilling out of the door lickety-split for the van and mom was standing in the doorway. I don’t know if she was talking to her husband, her child or another adult. “It isn’t a matter of play. It is a matter of safety!” She spoke loudly and with overtones of determination.

I was filled with compassion for this mother and all mothers of this generation. How do they navigate through all the perils of growing up in this time and still allow the children to know about proper pleasure and play?

Parenting has always been difficult. My father worried about me all my growing up and even after I was married. He always saw the perils. My mom gave warnings but expected the best. I tired to balance the two as a parent and am still finding out where I succeeded and failed.

I am convinced that a parent cannot do this job alone. Perhaps the role some of us have in this is prayer. I am reminded of lines from Gerard Manley Hopkins' “Spring” which reads in part like a prayer. He says that nothing is “so beautiful as spring” in nature and in childhood. He speaks of earth’s “sweet beginning” and “juice” and “joy” of life. But he implores Christ to win the youthful “innocent mind” in the “Mayday” “girl and boy.”

And so on my morning walk, I prayed for all the mothers and dads who are trying to protect their children and yet allow them to enjoy the good in life. I pray at this Advent season that innocent hearts will find deep pleasures as they are captured by Christ and saved from the perils of the twenty-first century.