4S: Why I hate the Santa

Why I Hate the Santa

I must have been a weird kid because I never really liked the idea of Santa Claus. I knew my parents were the ones buying the gifts and putting them on layaway and picking them up from the store and the works. I always knew that there was a limit to the gifts I could expect because there was a limit (a hard limit) to the family budget. We were kind of poor. So as a result, Santa was kind of poor. That’s life as a poor kid. Fantasies about rich Santa were a luxury we didn’t really have.

That said, I loved all the pageantry surrounding Christmas. I loved the lights, the trees, and all the decorations. I loved the wrapped presents and the hopeful anticipation of it all. I even came to love the much-needed infusion of socks and underwear that was the mainstay of our gifts. That’s not to say that we never got any nice things here and there. Every year, there was at least one thing. The rest was filler, like the summer sausage gift boxes with the one thing you really want and the rest being filler.

Thing is, I was never bitter about what I did or didn’t get. My older brothers often got nicer things. Being the youngest of three does have a few downsides. But all in all, I was pretty okay with Christmas despite the cognitive dissonance of our religion sometimes teaching that celebrating Christmas was a sin. Never mind all that. It has nothing to do with why I hate Santa. At least, I don’t think it does. Here are a few things that do:

But it’s a lie

I took my religion seriously even as a young kid. It mattered to me. I was earnest in a way that only kids can be. They have no pressing issues to eat up their time and attention. So they can super-serve an idea like no one else. So I super-served my faith. I knew how big of a deal lying was. So one of the hardest things for me to deal with was how even Christians were a part of the great collusion to lie to kids about where their gifts really come from.

Primarily, all good things come from god. Secondarily, they came from your parents, as well as friends and other members of your family. There was no Santa. And every year some kid didn’t know that was a year they would be praying to the wrong source and thanking the wrong people for their joyous occasion. How was it possible that even Christians were in on this?

Worse, I had to become a part of the lie. I wasn’t allowed to liberate children from this pernicious fantasy. On the contrary, I was expected to perpetuate it. I was probably going to hell because of that damned Santa creature. For a long time, I struggled with the idea of lying. Sometimes, it was okay. I couldn’t wrap my head around it. Theologically speaking, I still can’t.

Manipulative

Once you wrap your mind around the fact that Santa is a lie, all manner of new insights open themselves to you. One of the biggest of the new insights is the discovery of why the lie is so important. What exactly is it adults are trying to do with this deception?

When you ask it that way, the answer is obvious. They are trying to manipulate you. They are controlling you by controlling what you know and believe.

He knows when you are sleeping…

How creepy is that? Who is this dude who can look into my bedroom and not just know when I’m in bed, but when I’m sleeping? What exactly is he doing with that information?

He knows when you’re awake

Maybe you wake up in the middle of the night and get away with a little mischief your parents didn’t catch. But you can’t get away from the all-seeing eye of Santa. He knows…

He knows when you’ve been bad or good. So be good…

And there it is. You might think you are getting away with something. But you aren’t. He absolutely knows when you’ve been bad. He has a list, don’t you know? He’s checking it twice, which is weird for someone with such powers. Does he think he might miss something? But at the end of the day, you had better be good, and not at all for the sake of being good, but to avoid the vague threat of what will happen if you aren’t. That is manipulation writ large.

The thing about manipulation is once it has been identified as such, it loses its power. A good manipulator has to be subtle. As in sales, it is best to let the mark (I mean customer) think the sale was his idea. You didn’t get one over on him; he got one over on you. But the moment he recognizes you tightening the screws, he’s out. And you’re out of a sale. That is a manipulation fail.

Once I realized that these stories were all about trying to scare me into good behavior, it was over. Lying to me to make me dance to your tune was the death blow of trust. Any adult that would smile at me and lie to my face to try to get me to do something was on my naughty list. I had some early trust issues. Turns out that was probably a good thing.

Too much like god

Quick question: according to the stories Christians approve of, where did Santa get his powers? You see, I found it a little unsettling that this human could wield the power of god without any reference to god. And surely it had to be god. After all, who else would have that kind of juice?

Santa’s power was equivalent to hearing and answering prayers. Who does that sound like to you? He also had the power to reward and punish (by withholding reward). Satan can’t do that. He was the master of space and time and could bend both to his will. He could talk to animals. He could fly and do the most amazing miracles, even being in multiple places at once. Did I mention that he knows when every person on Earth is sleeping and awake? Yeah, that’s god, or something a lot like god.

I remember the first time I cajoled someone into trying to answer this question about Santa’s powers. The answer was something like, he works for god. A slightly better answer is that he was not human at all, but one of god’s angels. But if that was remotely true, where is he in the Bible? Surely, he didn’t fly under the radar such that no biblical writer knew about him. Maybe he didn’t get his commission until after the Bible was finished? At that point, we’re just done. Why bother with the charade any longer?

However, it did leave me with a lingering, nagging thought: If Christians could make up one god-like figure with all of these attributes, they could make up others, including the god I still believed in. This Santa was not a helper of any god I served; he was a threat.

Santa is us

As I grew into my young adulthood, I encountered yet another issue I had with the Santa myth. I was expected to be Santa. That has got to be the worst-case scenario for anyone expecting something good from Santa. As a child, he was manipulation. As an adult, he became a guilt trip.

I got involved with churches that went all out on the Christmas nonsense and that also was involved with a lot of charities in the local work. That is something I really didn’t have a lot of experience with as a kid because that version of my denomination did not do much of that sort of thing.

But as I got older, I had the opportunity to do things with Toys for Tots and other such programs. We delivered a lot of presents to one of the local orphanages. We also did caroling and that sort of thing to bring all that Christmas cheer. I was constantly reminded that if we didn’t do this, all those kids would go without Christmas. So it somehow became my responsibility to deliver Christmas to the less fortunate.

I didn’t mind doing it, so that is not what I am complaining about. There were actually two things that gave me a very uncomfortable feeling about it all:

1. What about the kids we couldn’t visit? What about all the kids that fell through the cracks and had no charity-minded groups to bring a truckload of gifts to? They also have to fit into the Santa story. And where they fit are the kids on the naughty list. They must be naughty, otherwise, Santa would have brought them gifts. The whole tradition made naughty listers of every poor kid on the planet. If we had to pretend the Santa story is meaningful, then we also had to wrestle with that aspect of it.

2. This overflow of peace and goodwill toward men was a one-day affair. Should kids in unfortunate circumstances only get one toy (for less than $20) a year? Is that the way this works? Do we care about their miserable lives the following month? Do we follow up in any meaningful way? Or is it just for the holidays? I hated the message that we care about you today but not tomorrow.

As much as I enjoyed volunteering, I hated the Santa-wrapped bullshit that came with it. And no, I was never really in a position to help a lot of kids in difficult circumstances. And I didn’t have the resources to do any meaningful follow-up. That said, I was a foster parent once upon a time and I have also taken in random strangers into my household who were in obvious and desperate need. That sort of thing is not easy and not without risk. I never felt like I was doing enough, and still don’t. It can never be enough.

My point is that when someone like me has to become someone like Santa, the system falls apart in catastrophic ways.

Conclusion: We don’t need Santa

I’m done with fantasies about ill-defined gods and their ill-defined powers to do ill-defined harm and ill-defined goods to the people who displease or please them. What a waste of a life that seems to me. Spend your 120 years however you like. But Santa and his boss will not be able to claim much more of mine.

But it is not just that. Santa is not just a waste of time because he is potentially harmful. He is a waste because he isn’t needed, and never was. If I’m Santa, then he’s not needed. Heck! I’m not even needed. The kids in the orphanages will do better by sending their Christmas wishlist to all the local churches who are able to fill them all with a single special collection. Santa isn’t needed.

If parents want to reward their good kids with rich gifts, more power to them. Santa isn’t needed for that. And the kids can learn to thank their parents more often. If poor families want to feel bad about their lot in life without thinking they must have done something wrong, Santa isn’t needed for that either.

If parents need that kind of manipulation to keep their kids in line, I question the quality of the parenting while recognizing how hard a job it is. There is no shame in not being particularly good at it. But parents can learn better behavior just like the children they are trying their best to raise. And Santa is certainly not needed for any of that.

You know who else is not needed for any of that? Santa’s boss.

And that’s the view from the skeptic.

David Johnson