The Deification of Santa Claus

[indent]Every year around this time, I worry about what we're saying to our children about who we are, what we believe, and what values they should grow up with.

I'm talking about Santa Claus, that deity who has come to represent Christmas in the past few decades. So ubiquitous has he become as the commercial God of the season that I prefer to call it Xmas, since even for the most devout Christians, there isn't much of their Christ in Christmas any more. And for the billions of non-Christians, Santa Claus has become the visible icon of Western faith, the omnipotent deity who sits on the throne of consumerism.

Wordnet describes a deity as:

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Coreweb defines God as "A hypothetical entity that can violate the laws of nature, e.g., by making something from nothing." Wordreference includes this definition: "any supernatural being worshipped as controlling some part of the world or some aspect of life or who is the personification of a force."

By any definition of the term, Santa Claus is a god. I offer as further proof these widely acknowledged attributes:

• He can travel around the world, visiting all of the homes of more than 6.4 billion people between dusk and the next dawn, without missing any one of them (except those he punishes, see below).
  
• Santa easily violates the laws of physics by appearing almost simultaneously in millions of places at the same time, completely ignoring the Newtonian laws of energy conservation, too.
  
• He judges right and wrong for millions of children, handing out rewards and punishments according to his own system of standards. Those standards are not defined in any canon, but rather are arbitrarily determined by his unique sense of "good" and "bad."
  
• Children are encouraged to worship him through prayer, letters and requests, promising good behaviour in exchange for material gain Santa provides.
  
• He is omniscient: he sees everyone at all times and weighs everyone's actions.
  
• He has a host of supernatural sub-deities (elves which can build millions of toys in his workshop without any apparent source of raw materials, and without violating any trademark or copyright laws, plus reindeer which can fly - a violation of the natural order - at supersonic speed and have illuminated noses without any source of power). These sub-deities are analogues to angels and a heavenly host.
  
• He eats millions upon millions of cookies and drinks millions of glasses of milk every Xmas eve, yet never bloats beyond his jolly character body mass.
  
• Santa defies gravity and flies by no natural or known means (magical or supernatural powers).
  
• His small sleigh can magically hold not only all the presents destined for millions of children, but carry its enormous weight yet not appear over-burdened.
  
• He can squeeze his large bulk through a tiny chimney that would block a cat, but without any physical effects (including getting dirty on the way down, getting burnt by the heat or setting off any alarms).
  
• Santa is able to enter homes without chimneys, although the magical method of doing so is never explained.
  
• Santa Claus has many effigies that represent His presence and encourage worship - statues, idols, lit icons on lawns, images in home windows and store windows.
  
• He lives in a distant place not identified with an actual location but vaguely placed at the North Pole, similar to the abode of the Norse (Valhalla) or Greek (Olympus) gods. Humans cannot visit or even see his lair, but Santa is able to leave it to visit human realms.
  
• Santa is eternal. He was not born, he doesn't age, he doesn't die, he doesn't even apparently get ill.

Santa Claus is a male god, a modern Zeus, Odin or Jehovah, with long flowing beard. But unlike the libidinous Greek gods, is essentially asexual: there is a Mrs. Claus (first name unknown), but no offspring (unlike the deities of many other faiths who seem to delight in impregnating humans who subsequently give birth to a demi-god).

Santa's spouse has none of the miraculous or supernatural powers Santa has. She exists as a cipher, merely to prove Santa isn't homosexual. But the proof is tenuous at best without more graphic evidence. The only thing we can assume is that, like her spouse, she enjoys a similar form of immortality.

Think about what we teach children when we tell them about Santa Claus: that an eternal, omnipotent, omniscient and omnipresent figure not identified in any religious canon but with equal powers to any diety has the authority to punish or reward their behaviour; that he has the ability to violate the laws of physics by travelling around the world in almost no time, has animals (analogues of angels) which defy gravity.

We tell children for years of their critical development period that Santa Claus is real, and a potent force to determine their fate (or at least their physical and commercial rewards on Christmas day). Then they learn that Santa is a myth. They learn adults have lied, that adults have betrayed and misled them. One of the earliest lessons we teach our children is that adults lie, and they lie about important things.

What's to tell them that that the other important things adults tell them - about religion, morals, values, honesty, truth, cooperation, peace, respect, the environment and so on - are valid, when they've just learned that everything they were told, everything they believed in, is a lie. And that the adults seem to feel no guilt whatsoever in perpetuating this same lie on other children again and again. So children learn their parents do not have consistent ethical values, but rather have values that change.

So if Santa is a lie, what's to say "stealing is wrong"' isn't a lie? If Santa is a lie, what's to say Jesus isn't another lie? If Santa is a lie, who can say a lesson like "taking your dad's gun and shooting your classmates is wrong" is a lie?

How can you tell children that - after years of saying he is real and omnipotent - the God Santa isn't real after all, but the omnipotent God Jesus is? Haven't you sown the seeds of disbelief in them from a young age?

Santa has his own day of celebration: December 25, and it's a religious holiday too, but the distinction is vague. Parents and kids get the day off in honour of Santa, to worship him, to delight in his benevolence. Images of Santa abound - especially in the pervasive pop media. Santa has become iconic.

The Canadian Post Office will accept letters addressed to Santa Claus, at the North Pole (postal code H0H 0H0). They will not accept letters addressed to Jesus, God, Allah, Muhammed, Buddha, Shiva, Kirshna... this gives official status to Santa as a legitimate being, while the others must be imaginary.

Santa is featured in numerous movies, often replayed around this time on many channels. There are very few films about other religious deities which get that sort of air time. Obviously Santa is more important than God or Jesus because he stars in more movies and TV commercials. Therefore his lesson is more important than either's, too.

Does the god Santa punish children of other faiths by not leaving presents simply because they were born into a religion? Children must see that as very arbitrary and even unfair. But it does cement the association of Santa as a god in the Christian pantheon.

Christian kids must already be baffled by the plethora of gods, demons, saints and angels already present in their religion (five for Catholics, four for Protestants*). Adding Santa into the mix only confuses the pantheon because he comes from outside the canon. Where does he fit? Is he more or less powerful than Jesus? Or is he Satan in disguise? (don't snicker - many right-wing Christians suggest that Santa is associated with Satan)

They will also growing up seeing Christianity as superior because they have a god who distributes toys and the other religions don't. And by association with the reward-punishment of gift giving, those children - therefore their religions - must have been bad because they didn't get any gifts. Not a very good way to encourage tolerance.

Does Santa punish people for being poor? If not, then why don't children of the poor and homeless get the same amount of gifts, even when they've been good all year? Richer children get bigger and more gifts. Obviously Santa believes being poor is bad. Santa is likely a Conservative (or Republican). Maybe even a Libertarian. He's definitely not a socialist, because then everyone would get gifts regardless of race, religion, or income. As a god, Santa has very definite political leanings.

Does Santa pay his elves? Or are they slave labour? Do his elves work a standard 40-hour week or are they on the 24/7 shift? What does that tell children about the ethics of the workplace?

It troubles me that we teach children it's okay for a strange man to enter the house at night when everyone is sleeping, see kids in their beds and night clothes, let him leave unknown objects in our living rooms, and consume our food. before Xmas, we introduce kids to Santa at some mall, forcing them to sit on his lap. At the same time we warn kids about touching strangers, letting them in the house, accepting gifts from them. Which is right?

Santa gives gifts every year - is he more benevolent than Jesus who never gives anything but a smile? Santa punishes bad kids every year by giving them lumps of coal instead of gifts. Is he more powerful than Satan who only gets to punish you when you die?

Why isn't Santa in the Bible?

Children can prove the existence of Santa because he leaves physical evidence when he visits. They cannot prove the existence of Jesus or God by any physical means. Santa requires no abstract faith, only empirical knowledge.

What are we telling kids about Christmas? That it's about greed, gimme, about shopping, about owning things, about having more, getting more, demanding more than anyone else gets. That it's about Walmart, Zellers, Canadian Tire and other big-box stores; it's about shopping malls and tawdry plastic decorations, it's about feeling pressured to buy, buy, buy. It's not about Christ, family, or a religious celebration.

It's not about giving, either. Santa does that: kids just have to demand they get. Xmas is about gimme. Santa is the Great God of Gimme. And that's what we're teaching our kids.

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Santa Claus, of course, is supposedly a corruption or Anglicization of Saint Nicklaus or Nicholas, based on the story of the fourth-century Bishop Nicholas of Smyrna (modern Turkey). St. Nicholas, however, may not even be a real person, since there is no documented proof of his existence, his deeds or his writings. Yet by 1500, there were more than 2,000 churches dedicated to St. Nicholas in Europe.

His name "Saint Nicholas" became bastardized in Europe to "Saint" (pronounced "San") Nicklaus" which became "San -Niklaus" - evolving to Santa Claus. Or perhaps, as Washington Irving wrote, it comes from the Dutch legend of "Sinter Klaas." The current figure of Santa and his commercial godhead are really the products of American marketing, born first in the mind of artist Thomas Nast in the late 19th century, then reborn in the 1920s as the ruddy-faced, cheery chap in the red suit we know today.

The entity known as Santa was enhanced and developed by commercial interests in the 1930s and the war years into the modern-day image of "Santa." Commercial forces quickly took over and buried any religious aspect to Christmas in order to turn Santa into an advertising effigy whose role was to boost retail sales.

The image of the fat, jolly Santa in his workshop - the focus for Coca Cola's advertising in the mid-1920s although they did not invent it - gelled, quickly pushing all other images and depictions of Santa out of the picture. It worked itself into the national psyche of North America, then Europe and today is almost uniform in advertising.

Santa's home was first located in Lapland - Finland - then moved to the North Pole. Along with him moved the corporations and marketing departments looking to make money from the susceptible, easily manipulated public.

In the post-war boom of exuberant spending, Santa Claus became the new deity, supplanting the traditional religious deities. He was like Dionysus on steroids: the God of commercial sales, the God of consumerism, the God of Excess. He has become more powerful than the old gods, with a greater presence, and worshiped for his appeal to base human greed. And in worshipping him, we have sold our collective souls, not to some supernatural evil like the imaginary Lucifer, but to the very real marketing departments of the corporations.

Santa Claus has become the commercial/corporate equivalent of Orwell's ubiquitous "Big Brother" - but far more frightening in his reach.
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* Five deities are eternal, omnipotent, omniscient and have supernatural powers, and are objects of worship or fear (sometimes both): Jehovah, Holy Ghost, Jesus, Mary and Satan. Protestants do not generally worship Mary, but subscribe to the rest. In some churches there is worship of saints and angels, as well, so the pantheon often varies in size.[/indent]