Santa Claus should be part of our Christmas as long as it is not the main part. He’s not central. He is part of the wider celebration—part of the extra decoration. His focus on children and gifts is a reminder of St Nicholas’ rescuing of children with gifts.
Some time ago a pastor friend of mine incurred the wrath of a squadron of militant mama bears when he preached at a school service against Santa—calling him a “fat pagan elf.” The good priest meant to extol the virtues of Saint Nicholas, but his iconoclasm of a contemporary Christmas icon was not appreciated and the complaints flooded his inbox.
The most extreme form of anti-Santa preaching is the frightening realization that “Santa” is an anagram of Satan. This sort of conspiracy theory linguistic legerdemain is always amusing because its proponents take it seriously—like the loons who argued Elvis must be alive because his name is an anagram of “lives.” The anti-Santa Scrooges have their own tradition. The Puritans of Cromwell’s England famously banned Christmas as being pagan and Catholic. Their denial of Christmas crossed the Atlantic, and tendrils of the same spiky negativity curl into our modern age like some poisonous form of holly and ivy—causing preachers and teachers to call “Bah Humbug!” on jolly old St. Nick and warn that Santa is indeed Satan disguised.
I’m for setting them on one side, and celebrating Santa—remembering that a man is always right in what he affirms and wrong in what he denies. Santa Claus is a very interesting amalgamation of various European and Christian traditions. He has adapted and adopted modern ways to perpetuate his myth, and he survives now as a curiously popular and perennial version of our shared European tradition. Why not enjoy Santa?
Where did Santa come from? First of all from St. Nicholas, the feisty and famous fourth century bishop of Myra in what is now Turkey. Feisty because he slapped down the heretic Arius at the Council of Nicea and famous for his work with the poor—dropping gold through the window of a poor man to ransom his daughters, and rescuing poor boys from human trafficking. So Nichaolas became the patron of children and his feast day of December 6 was celebrated with various charming traditions across Europe.
The Dutch were especially fond of “Sinterklaas”. He was portrayed as an old bishop with a long white beard, a red miter, chasuble, and bishop’s staff. He comes on a steamship from Spain and rides a grey-white horse. On his gift giving expeditions across the rooftops dropping gifts down chimneys he was accompanied by “Zwarte Piet”—Black Peter, a master of mischief.
Meanwhile, another bearded old man had been making the rounds in the bleak mid winter long before St. Nicholas arrived on the scene. The god Odin was a Gandalf type figure who bore the alternative name Langbaror, or “long beard”. Along with the beard he wore a cloak and a broad brimmed hat and carried a staff. Odin was the master of the ancient Yule celebration which spread across Northern Europe. The leader of the Wild Hunt—a ghostly procession through the sky, he rode an eight footed beast named Sleipnir to bring gifts to his people.
Thus Odin was gathered up and baptized, if you like, by St. Nicholas who, in Puritan England evolved into the non-Catholic Father Christmas. The Dutch brought Sinterklaas with them to New Amsterdam, which became New York and “Sinterklaas” became Santa Claus.
As the term “Santa Claus” became separated from the Catholic Sinterklaas or Saint Nicholas, so the bishop’s outfit disappeared. When they illustrated Charles Dickens’ Christmas Carol, the Ghost of Christmas Present—the jolly and generous old man—was pictured without all the Catholic bishop-like trappings—wearing the English style green cloak with holly in his hair. Around the same time—in 1863 the American illustrator Thomas Nast portrayed Santa as a rotund figure dressed in warm red winter woolies without a hint or nod to the garb of a fourth century, heretic slapping, children rescuing bishop.
The new image of Santa Claus in the mid nineteenth century sprang from the publication in 1821 of A Visit from St. Nicholas by Clement Clarke Moore—better known as The Night Before Christmas. In the poem he is first seen as a jolly elf. He has a belly that shakes like jelly and “a miniature sleigh and eight tiny reindeer.” His oft-forgotten diminutive stature explains how he gets down the chimney. By the 1930s Santa had fully evolved into the red and white suited, over sized guzzler of Coca Cola who has gone global.
What’s wrong with Santa? Nothing really. He’s an enjoyable part of the Christmas celebration. Some latter day Puritans dislike Santa because he’s pagan or Catholic or both, but their logic doesn’t follow. The vestiges of Catholicism and paganism are scattered throughout our American culture in ways too numerous to mention.
Other grumblers worry that we lie to our children when we tell them the Santa story, and that we don’t lie to them about anything else. I’m a bit sympathetic. There’s nothing wrong with telling the Santa story as we would tell any other fairy tale, and the cookie and milk left for Santa by the stockings is just a bit of fun. To perpetuate the hoax too long and too extravagantly is silly. Children are smart. They figure it out and they soon realize it’s just part of Christmas fun.
There’s nothing wrong with Santa as such, but the problem with our modern Christmas is that too often there is nothing but Santa. The modern Santa Claus is a manifestation of our culture and belief system just as much as Odin was for pagan Germanic peoples and St. Nicholas was for medieval Christians. As such he holds a mirror up to us and our culture, and what we see is a culture that used to be Christian, but which has evolved into a cheerful, consumerist secularism. In Santa we see a culture that is overweight with happy materialism—laughing with oblivious, self indulgent pleasure. Santa’s fine, but it there is no more to Christmas than Santa, then Santa is sad.
Santa Claus should be part of our Christmas as long as it is not the main part. He’s not central. He is part of the wider celebration—part of the extra decoration. His focus on children and gifts is a reminder of St Nicholas’ rescuing of children with gifts. Finally, Santa’s attention to children and his giving of gifts is a pointer to the profound truth that children are a precious gift, and that the Child of Bethlehem is the greatest gift of all.
This essay was first published here in December 2013.
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St Nicholas is a great saint of the Church, but Santa Claus has become a cargo cult deity, the Western world’s form of John Frum.
Santa used to be a hard worker, delivering a sleigh-full of presents to all the world in one night. Some tales hold that he stopped time to get the job done, but I think those stories come from lazy people who envy Santa’s initiative. Things have changed in recent years, though. A new festival, Black Friday, has inverted the nature of the deal. Now, celebrants camp outside Santa’s Workshop Thanksgiving night, a full month before the traditional sleigh ride. Sitting in beach chairs and wrapped in blankets, they drink mocha lattes from travel mugs and swap stories of Black Fridays past when Aunt Someone and Uncle Somebody got trampled in Box-Store Bliss and lost their two front teeth. Beneath the florescent lights inside, Santa laughs and laughs–not ho-ho-ho but ha-ha-ha. Why complain?
Yes, I know, it should be “fluorescent lights”; the other kind would be a Christmas miracle.
The American Puritans weren’t against Santa Claus and Christmas celebration just because it is Catholic. Mainly puritans found non-scriptural traditions such as Christmas celebration polluted by pagan traditions rooted in practices declared as pagan-worshiping abominations in scripture. Tree decoration was rooted in ancient sun-god worship. Biblical celebration of Christ’s birth would be correctly done during the jewish Feast of Tabernacles.
The problem with the world outside the church–during that 99% of the week that is not spent in worship services–is not too much Santa, but too little Jesus.
Fantastic.
Thorough.
Revealing.
It says “out loud” what we already know in our hearts, and those types of articles are the most effective.
How can I pin this for next yr? Great info if like to keep in arms reach.
My sweet near genius 11 year old granddaughter still believes in Santa.
Fr DL’s musings remind me of some stanzas from John Betjeman’s “Christmas” poem read to us this morning by our auxiliary bishop:
“And is it true,
This most tremendous tale of all,
Seen in a stained-glass window’s hue,
A Baby in an ox’s stall ?
The Maker of the stars and sea
Become a Child on earth for me ?
And is it true ? For if it is,
No loving fingers tying strings
Around those tissued fripperies,
The sweet and silly Christmas things,
Bath salts and inexpensive scent
And hideous tie so kindly meant,
No love that in a family dwells,
No carolling in frosty air,
Nor all the steeple-shaking bells
Can with this single Truth compare –
That God was man in Palestine
And lives today in Bread and Wine.”
Merry Christmas.
Regrettably, the creche is permitted on public property as long as it appears along side of all manner of cultural detritus. Drained of all religious significance, it becomes a ” feel good ” symbol of good will, of ” diversity “, without judgment or discipleship. The Supreme Court led the charge, first ruling that a display of the mager at Christmas violated its concept of the 1st Amendment and then, caught in a straitjacket, deciding that it was OK but only as a cultural artifact, one among many, which must share the public space with the star of David, Kwanzaa, santa claus, the star and crescent and, on occasion, the inverted cross of Satanism. Better that it not be displayed than trotted out every December but deprived of its religious significance. Christmas is a commercial enterprise, filled with television eating drinking and material getting. Forced merriment. Faux cheer. Ersatz good will. That’s the real hohoho of it.
Santa’s suit is a throwback to his episcopal office. The white fur on the front of his suit is a reminder of the bishop’s orfrey. The problem with Santa is that he is a “works righteous” dude as portrayed in our culture. For the children’s message I would sing “You better watch out…” and then make the point that Santa is a Christian who believed in grace and, no matter how bad you were, as a Christian, he would still come to you with presents. Why? Because he is a Christian!