Santa Claus and Christmas

A Case for Christian Incorporation

(avg. read time: 4-9 mins)

So after the extensive series I just finished, I thought it might be best to do a relatively short entry this time. Although Christmas Day has passed, it is still the Christmas season and so it is still fitting to discuss a certain Christmas issue about Santa Claus. In my circles of friends and family, it is not uncommon to hear objections about including Santa Claus in Christmas festivities. Objections include reasons such as the following. It is lying to children to pretend that Santa exists and there is no point to it since they will find out on their own eventually that he does not exist. Whatever he was in the past, he is little more than a corporate logo anymore that reminds us how commercialized Christmas has become. And most commonly of all: Santa only distracts from Jesus, the real focus of Christmas (to use the common slogan: he is the reason for the season).

Before I respond, I want to clarify why this subject interests me and what I hope to accomplish here. My parents did not raise me to believe in Santa Claus, so I never had any sort of crisis moment where I realized he was not real. I watched stories about the character that I enjoyed, but that is as far as it went. If I had children, I would have no interest in getting them caught up in believing the Santa Claus mythos either. I would be happy to tell or explain various stories about the character, just out of my interests in storytelling and characterization, but I would have no interest in inculcating or sustaining a belief in his existence. But I am also not against including Santa imagery or a Santa character of some kind in Christmas festivities. What really interests me about this subject is how it exemplifies the different, sometimes completely contradictory, ways people respond to problematized symbols. I hope to use this as a case for being open to multiple ways of responding to problematized symbols, understanding how others respond to those symbols, and thus be better able to engage in dialogue about them. And I think this would be a less charged case-study than certain other ones that are popular in political and religious discourse today.

My focus here will thus be on the last objection of Santa distracting from Jesus, but I will give some brief responses to the other two concerns. In principle, I have no problem with parents deciding not to incorporate Santa into Christmas celebrations. Making decisions on whether or not to include Santa and how to do so if one does—concerns which form only a small part of the larger concern of what parts of the larger culture to familiarize one’s children with—can be difficult to figure out. And, as is often the case, I think it is clear here that I am writing primarily with an American context in mind as I do not know how much of a concern this issue is in other countries these days (I would certainly be interested to hear from my non-American readers about this). I would not say my thoughts on this matter rise to the level of conviction, but they are, rather, suggestive and responsive to people who argue that it might be wrong for anyone to promote the figure of Santa Claus as part of the Christmas or Advent season. I think it is possible to have a good Advent and Christmas season celebrating Christ and all of the elements of his story while still including a Santa figure—though many of the elements associated with him in modern mythology do not necessarily have to be included. In fact, Santa can serve well to point to Jesus, especially since the origins of the figure, in part, go back to a man who consciously served Jesus. What is more problematic is keeping up an illusion of Santa’s existence once your child begins to question it seems too fraught with potentially reverberating problems that it seems best to avoid that particular obstacle altogether. At the same time, I know J. R. R. Tolkien wrote letters from Father Christmas for his children and thus showed how enjoyable it can be for both parents and children to participate in this common storytelling activity. It is more of a question of just how far the “play” goes and what characteristics it takes on.

I can certainly understand the logic behind the rejection of Santa as a corporate logo. For many Christians in America, Santa seems to be a corrupted symbol insofar as he serves as a distraction and feeds into the over-commercialization of Christmas. Of course, it is not exactly surprising that such has happened to Santa; much of the commercialization of Christmas focuses on one of the central rituals: giving gifts. Santa has a close association with gifts; ergo commercialization was inevitably going to claim him. There are also many different interpretations of Santa in popular culture, most of which are harmless, but also not especially helpful or edifying. But anyone who pays attention to Historical Jesus studies, books on the Gospels, christological debates, and pop culture portrayals of Jesus knows that people have attached many interpretations to Jesus as well, often making him a symbol of whatever they regard as having the highest value or highest virtue.

Symbols are always open to misuse and abuse as they also are open to proper interpretation and use (or more neutral ones in between). Such risk is also implicit in the use of words, which are symbols after their own fashion. In general, there are three approaches to responding to the knowledge that symbols are corrupted and misused. One of them is to ignore the corruption and misuse and simply press on with the symbols without qualification, since the problematic interpretation is not the person’s particular interpretation. Another one is to reject the symbol as being so corrupted as to be beyond usefulness and edification, and thus possibly move on to another symbol (if any). This approach is the one of my interlocutors. The last one—the one I take here—is to acknowledge the problematic use of the symbol in question and make concerted efforts at presenting a better way. Personally, I do not always advocate the last approach, since there are times when symbols become no longer fit for purpose, yet I think it is appropriate here. But in Santa’s case, what is a better way as concerns the celebration of Advent and the Christmas season with their dual foci on the two advents of Jesus? I think one can find some answers to this question by breaking down the Santa character into some of his historical parts.

Santa Claus, or whichever of his many names one might call him, as we now know him in America is an amalgamation of several European figures and one Greek person from ancient Asia Minor. One is the German Christkind (“Christ-child”), the spiritual bringer of Christmas gifts. Another is the English Father Christmas, most famously represented in Charles Dickens’ classic A Christmas Carol as the Ghost of Christmas Present. He is the embodiment of the festive, celebratory spirit of Christmas characterized by joy, peace, and goodwill (it is perhaps via connection with him that stories began associating Santa with the “Christmas spirit”). Perhaps most influential of all is the Dutch figure Sinterklaas, the giver of gifts primarily to children whose presence is a continuation of celebrating St. Nicholas, the giver of gifts and (apocryphally) puncher of heretics (but that is a story for another time). While Sinterklaas is most directly influential for the modern Santa (after all, one of his alternate names is St. Nicholas/St. Nick, Christkind is an alternative to the Sinterklaas figure, and Santa Claus is itself an Anglicization of Sinterklaas), there are other figures across Europe who bear similar relations to St. Nicholas.

St. Nicholas of Myra was a Greek bishop in Asia Minor and was one of the signers of the Nicene Creed. People knew him for his powerful prayers, as miracles became associated with his intercessions (so that one of his names is St. Nicholas the Wonderworker [Thaumaturgos]) and for his generosity in giving gifts of money to the poor. His manner of giving secretly (particularly at night) was a practice of Jesus’ teaching in Matt 6:3–4 to keep one’s left hand from knowing what the right hand is doing so that the Father who sees what is done in secret will give reward. In these ways and others, he demonstrated his identity as a dedicated disciple of Jesus, whose generosity extends from the root of Jesus’s own. Indeed, it was his more ordinary activity in acting for the good of those near him, especially the poor, and his characterization as your friendly neighborhood saint that has made him one of the most persistently and pervasively respected saints, even among Protestants who otherwise eschew the veneration of saints.

This historical background provides some of the good symbolism behind Santa Claus. Christians could take the figure as he is or use him as a prompt to tell the story of the original St. Nicholas and how his practice established or at least contributed to the gift-giving ritual of Christmas, which itself points back to Christ, the consummate gift to humanity. They might even do so on the day for St. Nicholas’ feast (December 6 in the Western traditions and December 19 in the Eastern ones), so as to avoid the concern for confusing the imagery of Christmas. Santa need not distract from Jesus; his historical predecessor clearly pointed people to him. In addition to the saint, Christians should consider how C. S. Lewis made Father Christmas a servant of Aslan, his analogue of Jesus, as well as how Dickens made him a key figure for a message that fits well into the Christmas season. As Father Christmas, Santa encapsulates the joy, festiveness, peace, and goodwill that should typify Christians who celebrate the birth of Christ. Christians should also consider how this “Christmas spirit” fits into the content of what we celebrate on this day. Even as Santa is based on past figures and is himself a present icon, insofar as he points to Christ, he also directs our minds to the future, to the hopefulness for life—namely the life of the kingdom to come—that characterized his predecessors. In the hope for that life, we come back to the source of that life, the life that is the light of the world, the life of Jesus that we receive from the Father by means of the Spirit.