Rejection Of Santa Is Cause For Grief
Santa Claus, per many well-meaning Christians’ imaginations.
Anyone see this latest anti-Santa screed from the latest greatest newest blogger with sarcastic sensibility?
Please, carry on with the Kris Kringle schtick for whatever reason you like, but not this one. Any reason but this reason. Santa makes Christmas magical? SANTA?
This is what I hate about the guy. He’s a Christmas-stealing glory hog. He’s a diva; everything has to be about him, doesn’t it?
This makes me give a holiday hoot. Right — because Santa is actually real; he can actually “hog glory” or steal Christmas and draw all attention to himself, and “he” is not at all guided by the wills of parents who can either use “him” as a Christ-ignoring, moralistic lie or a Christ-exalting myth.
Contra this comes a colleague at Christ and Pop Culture. Like a toymaking boss — or Kris Kringle’s public defender Fred Gailey from Miracle on 34th Street — S. L. Whitesell shellacks Santa-phobia among Matt Walsh and other well-meaning holiday myth-haters.
Santa-phobia is a result of the atrophy of the Evangelical imagination.
And:
Information—data—is lowest in the hierarchy of higher faculties, then knowledge, then wisdom, then imagination. We moderns are addicted to information and we lionize knowledge. Christians and other traditional religionists place a great premium on wisdom. But Evangelicals at least resist imagination. The same impulses lead us to poo-poo Halloween and scary stories. The High Reformed places such emphasis on propositional truth—beautiful in its own right!—that they have little time for unbound storytelling. Fundamentalists, in my experience, tend to be so narrowly biblical that anything not explicitly mentioned or sanctioned in the Scriptures is off-limits. (Elves using magic to guard Lothlórien just sounds pagan.)
This is cause for grieving. Imagination is the height of the power of the imago dei: It is the engine of Creation itself.
Read more at Why You Should Believe in Santa Claus (Even If He Doesn’t Exist).
Meanwhile, this week I’m handing over the reins to my weekly column sleigh to fellow fantasy fan and Army veteran Timothy Stone. He has volunteered a two-part column about Santa’s origin story, and why we should embrace this myth born in Church history.
I agree completely, but even for those who don’t like Santa, the self-righteous screeds of Matt Walsh and his ilk don’t help anything.
Alas, I wonder how often this applies to any of us, especially within Biblical faith.
What, giving Santa some love is just stealing it from Baby Jesus? Should I expect this guy to not love his successive children for fear of loving the first one less? Or should I hope he has no children in case that makes him love his spouse less? This guy has no faith in people’s sense of proportion, does he.
Notleia, I believe this arises from the same impulse as “I don’t read other books because I believe that the Bible is all we need.” Of course, even by saying that slogan they would be forced to conclude that they don’t really believe that — they believe that they also needed to say that slogan in order to get the point across.
To such well-meaning Christians I would say: Do you not believe that Jesus glorifies Himself to us by giving us good and perfect gifts? Many Christians say “Santa” is a gift for them and their children, so how can you claim “no he’s not, ever” without calling them liars?
The problem though is that Santa is not a story as we tell it to kids. It’s a physical explanation of a fact; how do presents appear under a tree? Essentially, we lie to kids about it, and they become disenchanted if only a little bit. The more the kid believes, the more he’s set up for a fall.
S.L. Whitesell doesn’t really engage this as opposed to liking Santa as some nebulous idea that he thinks was never tied to the real world. It’s a different thing entirely, with different effects.
How one approaches this issue is entirely based on how we perceive Santa was “sold” to us as children, or has been sold to other people. All it takes, by the way, to disprove the “[children] become disenchanted if only a little bit” claim, apparently about all children(!), is for one person to say: “It didn’t work out that way for me. Instead God has used Santa, not despite the childhood stories but because of them, to help me learn to desire His wonders and His ‘magic.'” Naturally I make that claim, not only about me but about many other former children.
Santa isn’t real. “Belief” in him does not presuppose any particular backstory. You can make up your own. You can go back to the original St. Nicholas legends, at Timothy Stone will do in our upcoming series, or you can even redeem the whole thing with the North Pole and cartoon elves and reindeer. I say: Is it too much to ask for both? And either way you can easily throw out the “he knows if you’ve been bad or good” moralism. No one actually follows through on threats of coal anyway.
To do that, I think we would really need a way to show that Santa really is true. Not literally true, but true in the same sense that great fictional stories are true. I bet there is a good way to explain to kids how Santa is true even if he might not really exist, but I can’t think of it.
Of course, we can always point to Santa as a type of God/Christ. I’m not sure if that’s enough.
You’re arguing from exceptional cases, I think. A kid doesn’t think like that, and that’s more of an adult rationalization far in hindsight. A kid might be sad, or start to think Christmas is for babies, but not that.
I’d also argue that the kid sees Santa as a real figure, and there is a backstory most follow. When the kid goes up to talk to Santa at a department store, it isn’t the same as a person seeing a priest; that kid really believes its him and relates to him as real. Santa really is an odd belief if you think of it. Adults know it isn’t true, but we create an illusion for very young kids that we go to some pretty odd lengths to maintain.
I don’t think you can make up your own so easily. A good example is Rise of the Guardians, which tried to do so and tanked in theaters.
I’m flattered. But! seriously, I’m actually arguing from my own case. Not an over-generalized case, as the critics do (what about all those stories about atheist children who say they now reject Jesus just like they rejected those lies about Santa?!). Here we must talk about specifics, not statistics.
Yours might not. I do. I know others who do. Flattery aside, I’m not that much of an exceptional case. Neither are they. Shall we not argue based in supposed imaginary hordes of backup witnesses, either on your side or mine?
Pshaw, says I. Again with the generalizations. I am not saying: all children would not think like that. I’m saying: All it takes is for one child not to think like that to call into question your view. Contra generalizations or even actual statistics — “Barna research shows 66 percent of children taught to believe in Santa APOSTACIZE by age 24!” — I am saying: It matters not what “the majority” does or says. I don’t base my case on them any more than I base my case on Christianity being true on a claim that “so many people believe it.”
I also challenge the worldly notion of caring for what admitted atheists atheists and skeptics are saying, as a basis to determine best Christian practice. 😛
This is entirely subjective and opinion-based. One might as well say that a great supporting evidence for the Bible condemning eating pork is that it’s just really really gross, besides. (Oh wait. I actually did hear that claim recently. …)
Meh. Not because of a Santa-reinvention, I shouldn’t wonder. (Others have been and have done better, such as Arthur Christmas.) It tanked because: Dreamworks.
I don’t think you get my points there, but amplifying on them might lead into a circular argument.
Bummer man, you beat me to the point. 😉
I wonder if there’s any way to redeem the Santa myth. There’s got to be ways to tell it other than as a cute lie that children believe for a while before they become too smart for it.
The culture connecting Santa to commercialism and worldly prosperity doesn’t help, either. To the old, nominally religious American culture, Christmas was about getting all the crap you want.
The older, more generic “Father Christmas” myth is probably better and healthier than Santa.
Heh, great minds eh?
I don’t know why it needs to be redeemed. It would be like saying we need to redeem the myth of the easter bunny, and that evangelical’s unbelief in a fuzzy rabbit who delivers eggs on the day of the Resurrection shows a lack of imagination. I’m not sure it was all that good of a fit to begin with.
I think we should try to redeem everything that the culture perverts, because we believe that our faith is really the truth.
Like in the other response I’m about to write, my comments will take a more challenging tone. This is because I notice, even among Christians otherwise open to fantasy and wonder — both of which glorify God — a bizarre reluctance even to keep an open mind about whether the Santa myth, reindeer and all, is included.
Some say the same thing about fantasy creatures such as fauns or dryads.
There’s only one reason against this: It’s silly. How old is the “Easter bunny”? At best a century? I’ll do some research. But the legend of St. Nicholas goes back way further. Even the modern reimagining goes back at least 190 years.
Yes, it’s silly. But even I can keep an open mind here. However, you will find many more grown Christians who claim God used Santa (not a bunny) in their lives to promote the best kind of “magic” — one that leads directly to Him.
Because the Santa myth directly competes with Jesus and banalizes His message. And even granting the message it does portray (be good, and someone will give you stuff) it’s destroyed by the fact we know it’s a myth and aren’t even keen on that message these days anyways. Any value it has gets destroyed because we teach kids the myth and then knock it down in front of them. How on earth can that myth resonate with any strength to an adult?
Fauns and Dryads are just literary devices without much of this baggage. The question over them is whether or not fantasy writers can use actual fantasy when writing to Christians, and they aren’t loaded with any moral message or usurp any Christian thing.
I don’t really see Santa leading people to God. I mean, push comes to shove I could probably capture the idea of him; the benevolent spirit who gives gifts to the moral and pure and withholds from the bad, the dose of magic you can only see once per year and if you can stay awake and alert to do so. But he’s really a weak thing on the verge of being a dead trope, and it’s telling that we haven’t had very many good works on Santa alone, as opposed to deconstructions of him.
Briefly: Which of your points do you feel I haven’t “gotten”? It may be that yes, I haven’t “gotten” them; instead I’ve disagreed with and challenged them.
Isn’t this a reification fallacy? The myth(s) themselves — plural — are only tools, useful for good or bad, depending on your own intent and especially the child. On SpecFaith I often stress not that fantasy is neutral, but that it falls under the category of “consumables” Jesus mentioned in Mark 7. It’s not what you put in that defiles a man, but what comes out. Anyway, I’ve already said that some would make the same reification fallacy (e.g., personalizing a Thing and giving it motives) about fantasy story elements.
I’m not talking about this moralistic message. But it’s a bit ironic to oppose any form of Santa story-enjoyment only because some use it as a means to legalism. “I can’t do that; it’s legalistic; I shall avoid the Appearance of Evil!”
More generalizations. In every case? In every family? In every child? Once again your case is built on a presumed scenario that will inevitably recur every time it’s tried so therefore it’s best to avoid it at all. Once more I’m saying: all it takes is one person to say, “That’s not what happened,” and your whole case falls apart. 😛 You’ve taken it upon yourself, however, to build your case on an absolute negative. But if you built it on anything else — this could be a bad idea some of the time — you’d need to allow that this becomes an issue of diverse Christian freedoms for God’s glory (Rom. 14).
How on earth can that myth resonate with any strength to an adult?
More opinions, though. Go read about Pan the original Faun and see how quickly The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe can be loaded up with baggage. Seems I recall Father Christmas himself also making a cameo. Is that part loaded with “baggage”? Does it make you want to reject the story?
I’ve just told you that God did this very thing with me. Open your eyes a bit?
No, don’t do that. Really, don’t. No one here is advocating Moralistic Santa.
Most of the above post was that you aren’t really getting that to believe in a Santa that’s mythical is an exceptional case for a kid. A kid is a very concrete person, and doesn’t really hold that sensibility. They don’t leave cookies for Santa as a ritual, but as a person. You’re arguing that I’m generalizing here, but I’m not seeing cultural evidence of children holding your view as opposed to adults holding it. To look and say God uses something to bring us to him is based on maturity and hindsight.
I’d agree with you ordinarily but again, 1. Santa is told to young kids not as a myth and 2. It’s a competing story to explain Christmas. The use cases of Santa being used harmoniously with a Christian worldview are really small, and there isn’t much to Santa when you strip both points away from him.
Exceptions don’t make the rule. Even then, you’re not really getting it. Just because a minority of people find something good doesn’t make it applicable to everyone. I can find Christian meanings in anime, for example, but I can’t go and immediately say that the majority of it is perfectly fine to consume, or use my experience as definitive because I’m aware I’m a minority perspective in it.
If we told our kids that Mount Olympus existed, maybe. Most Greek and Roman mythology has been desacralized to a point that no other religion has been though, and thusly becomes a literary device. Even then, Lewis skirts the line sometimes. People forget that Bacchus isn’t just the fat drunk guy on a donkey you see in Fantasia, but Dionysus the twice-born, the ecstatic God of mystery religions. Lewis was making the traditional point that the scholastics did, that old paganism was a nursemaid to Christianity, and Bacchus or Father Christmas were types of proto-Christs at the command of the real one.
But this is a refined point, and only can exist because the pantheon as a real force is extirpated of any power. During the years that Christianity started, there really wasn’t this idea.
I’m speaking generally, not exclusively. Even then, I don’t see what aspects of the Santa myth even could do so. You’re arguing for something which to me is stripped of everything that makes Santa Santa. Somehow, all the physical and moral aspects of the myth don’t matter; what really is left of it that would lead anyone to God?
Dude, what’s left of him without it? You’re telling me that all the popular conceptions of him are wrong generalizations, but you haven’t really told me what he means in the absence of them.
Not sure where you’re getting the idea that I’m advocating a “mythical” Santa for children. I’m afraid I’m much worse than that.
For children who would enjoy and “get it,” I would absolutely leave open the possibility that a literal, physical Santa really did dwell in the North Pole and distribute gifts every Christmas Eve, gifts based on the fact that God is good even to those who despise Him, and gifts meant to glorify the ultimate Giver. There’s your concrete realization: a reenactment of supernatural reality, even in a holiday fantasy.
Thank you again. Yet I’m not exceptional. There’s no cause to fear that inevitably every Christian child could not benefit from a similar process, again not despite theSanta fantasy (God uses cancer for His own ends) but directly because of it.
Repetition doesn’t establish fact. 😛 And abusus non tollit usum. I continually challenge the assumed, not proven, notion that a story can only ever “compete” with Christmas. This, however, is the same spiritual-sounding “logic” that we don’t need sermons or devotionals because “we have the Bible.” That is such a “high” view of the Bible that not even the Bible itself advocates. And yours is such a high view of Christmas — an extra-Biblical holiday, mind! — that presumes, not proves, that any accompanying legends about saints or elves or magic sleighs cannot help but, of their own intrinsic evil, diminish Christ.
For the discerning Christian, I challenge that Christ is bigger than that. One need not devalue other legends to make Him seem greater. He already is; He can “handle” competition; easily He masters all myths.
Show me where I said, “This makes it applicable to everyone,” and I’ll retract it. Rather my point was: You can’t say it’s applicable to no one.
What if I told you …
You can keep the magic old man, the elves, the flying sleigh and reindeer, the North Pole, milk and cookies, and the lot of it, and banish the moralism while seeing even modern-myth Santa Claus as a sub-giver of common-grace gifts?
That Santa and moralism are not inevitably intertwined?
That you’re not held hostage by a Majority?
If you can’t imagine past the moralistic stigma — to put away the “baggage” and escape the controlling gravity of all those other peoples who misuse the myth — there’s really not much I can do.
Already I offered one sterling example of Santa redeemed: Father Christmas in The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. There is not hint of commercialism, glory-stealing, or gifts-for-their-own-sake with this Father Christmas. He is a deeply spiritual man. He serves Aslan. (The film version accentuated this by portraying him in costume as a long-lost elderly warrior.) And he gives “tools, not toys,” for the fulfillment of Aslan’s purposes.
What if we had a Father Christmas who did that? How would it change things?
Why do you need this specifically? Why not just say “today we give gifts to each other to celebrate God, who gave Jesus as a gift to us ?” I mean, I get if you wanted to write about this, or teach about it as a means to find truth in things, but why would we need to celebrate using Santa?
Yeah, it’s a personal belief of mine that the best way to reduce belief is to set up alternate, competing stories and promote them. Christ will never be diminished, but it’s possible for people to be distracted and their energies misspent. It’s very hard to divorce yourself from your home culture.
I don’t see the point of this only in respect to celebrating a holiday. I have no problem with this in fictional or teaching terms. But this would be like celebrating Aslan Day on Christmas, too. I don’t think it adds anything and it does divert focus from Jesus, who is more than enough reason to celebrate and make merry.
Okay, I think I see what DM’s saying. Instead of why not Santa, we might as well ask why Santa.
The Nativity provides enough of an explanation for the practice of giving gifts and such. There is plenty of Christian meaning in the tradition of the Christmas tree, even if it might have originated in paganism. Santa just makes the whole symbolic scheme of the holiday more complicated, so what purposes does he really serve?
Is that right?
DM, you keep dodging my previous points. Yet as bainespal asked, it’s fair to ask why rather than why not. Plus, it’s Christmas, so I can follow along rather than snark. Plus, it sounds like you’ve silently conceded my rebuttal to the whole “it’s evil for everyone” claim.
You’re a bit late, though. Why do we need to celebrate Christ’s birth at all? The Bible doesn’t tell us to do that. Why do we need to give gifts to celebrate His birth? Why do we need to have a holiday?
Even further: Why do we need to have this website? need to have this conversation? need to care for any fantasy stories anyway?
You can take the “why do you need” question anywhere you like, and thereby make anything or any practice that individual Christians can feel the freedom to enjoy sound so unspiritual and materialistic.
But if you’re trying to stick with the Bible, that Word never enforces such “need to”-based nonsense questions. The question on its face is absurd and only sounds spiritual. When some questioned whether others could enjoy the freedom to enjoy certain meats (again with the 1 Cor. 8–10), Paul’s response was not, “Why do you need to do this?” E.g.: aescetic-sounding pragmatism. Instead he presumed the motive of glorifying God in diverse and free ways, a higher goal behind his commands that “whether you eat or drink, or whatever you do, do all to the glory of God” (1 Cor. 10:31) and “whatever does not proceed from faith is sin” (Rom. 14:23).
My answer to the “need to” questions: Because for me, this brings glory to God, more than I would have glorified Him without the thing. You may be different, but do not question my freedom that is (on good days) not based in sinful impulse, but in God-worship.
You may be different. But then again, I’m not trying to prove that we should all enjoy the Santa parts this holiday season. I only need prove that it’s not evil and that it’s optional for those who freely choose in Christ to make this fantasy part of their celebration — their celebration, by the way, of a holiday some say we don’t “need.”
This is gonna sound mean, but: why even care for the message of SpecFaith then? Are we not all about enjoying and promoting fantasy stories — stories that the most culture-fundie among us would say are intrinsically evil and inevitably “replace” the Gospel? Bunk, I say. And I’ve already said, and shown, why the “alternate, competing” part is bunk. It is only that way for you. It’s only your opinion. I’ve already offered Biblical evidence to the contrary. Won’t repeat it! 😛
Here I wish to sympathize: I fully agree this is your situation. I would not say, “Well, he’s lying. If he really really tried he could enjoy what I enjoy and glorify God the same way.” Conversely I suggest you not project your own cultural challenges onto other Christians, that’s all.
(Blinks and eyes slowly widen) Dude … that would be sweet.
But! seriously. In fact The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe has become a very Christmas-sy story to me. Aslan in that book (and the film version, released at Christmastime), Father Christmas, and the wonder of dead winter made into living spring, remind me of Christ. There would therefore be nothing wrong and everything right with, in some sense, “celebrating” Aslan on that day. Frankly, if you can’t do that on Christmas without sinning, then you need to get rid of any Aslan references or “celebration” on non-Christmas days also. In fact, get rid of Christmas while you’re at it. Do we “need” it? 😛
Again, opinion. I know this already. But when you say this, I only sympathize that this is the case for you. It’s not the case for all. In fact, the effect of the “Santa” myth on me has been the exact opposite of its effect on you. Really, this has more to do with our own personalities, unique temptations, background and surrounding culture(s) than it has to do with direct commands from God on this.
To play devil’s advocate (er… Fundies’ advocate? Evangelical Cheese advocate?), I really do understand that some parents don’t like the Santa tradition because they fear their children will suffer disillusionment when they get older. Maybe Christian parents go too far when they worry that their children will reject faith in God upon learning that Santa isn’t real, but their concerns are understandable.
S. L. Whitesell wrote:
It’s definitely true that the Santa myth has become corrupted and awkward in our rationalistic, commercialized culture. Which is interesting, because it might illustrate how the True Myth, the Gospel, has also become corrupted in American culture.
Parents don’t need to lie about where the gifts under the tree came from, just as they wouldn’t claim that the baby Jesus figurine in their Nativity set is literally the real baby Jesus.
Dude can speak for himself about not being able to revel in fantasy. I’ll be over here squeeing over my fandoms. Forget Santa, I’m unhappy because Rory Williams isn’t real.
Good point. I’ve experienced that too.
In fact, I can honestly say that I’ve experienced more disappointment due to Middle Earth not being real than due to Santa not being real, even though I was never told that Middle Earth was real.
Maybe that’s one way to approach the Santa Problem — as “practice” for the disillusionment that comes from everyday life.
“No, child, Santa doesn’t really exist. You’ll soon discover that all the cool, fun, awesome stuff you like doesn’t really exist either. But you still have to believe in spite of all that, or you will have nothing to live for. Some day God will give you the happiness that you’re never going to find in this life.”
Well (squints, peeking under the hood) there’s the problem right there.
Any fear of anything, including imaginary characters, fantasy, or anything else in culture, that doesn’t proceed from faith is sin (Rom. 14:23).
Bainespal, my mom told me at one point that Santa was the spirit of Christmas. I still believe that. Sort of a Father Christmas/Ghost of Christmas Present (though he doesn’t die in night) kind of chap sent by God. Perhaps delusional, but apart from the historiography well worth researching of the Santa Claus myth, this is one way to look at it. Another is just a pretend game. You can just up-front pretend, and have him be in service to God, or do it wryly as the author of the piece linked to does with his Peter Pan analogy.
For me, it is wrong to lie and say Santa is real, but that is to each their own, and not my business what other families specifically do. I will say that for me this is part of a larger reaction AGAINST the lack of imagination in the evangelical mind. Years ago, there was a chap bemoaning the lack of intellectual rigor in evangelicalism. Well, we have slowly made progress to right that ship. Now, we have no imagination, in some precincts.
I feel ill-used by those who had me “bah-humbugging” about Santa, denouncing Harry Potter as evil witchcraft, other fantasy too, etc. There are all concerns to deal with for individual Christians and parents, notions of Christian liberty, so forth. But I do think that when we limit imagination (Santa), lie about issues (Santa, Harry Potter, fantasy in general), not look for redeeming factors, (Santa, HP/fantasy), or interfere in other families’ specific business (Santa at malls a big thing), we either sin or act unwisely in a way that hurts us, other Christians (like with me listening to folks I truly loved and respected following my dad’s death), or hurt the testimony of Christ.
Really, if it were not for some folks in the Army and online friends since then, including on here, I would still be somewhat of that arrogant, self-righteous, no-imagination jerk that would make Matt Walsh look gentle and filled with wonderment by comparison. I feel angry at myself for how I acted and the wonder I missed out on, as well as my bad testimony for Christ. I feel miffed at those who encouraged this Puritanical behavior.
I am from the pov of those who used to be the pompous, unimaginative sort, warning others not to act the same way and thus make the same mistakes.
My take on the Santa scene: Santa can and has been a positive enhancement to the Christmas season and CAN co-exist with a traditional view of Christmas. Ask Ernest P Worrell. In Ernest Saves Christmas;, cab driver Ernest helps Santa but he also has a bumper sticker in his glove box, <I>Keep Christ in Christmas</i>.
But there’s a point when Santa becomes unhelpful to Christian. Santa is used as a way for retailers to cash in on Christmas particularly in countries like Japan without having to deal with that whole Baby Jesus thing.
AN overemphasis on Santa can detract and can lead to a bratty, It’s all about you getting ridiculous amounts of material goods thing that can conflict with the actual meaning.
Let’s suppose that we taught kids that Independence Day started when Sparkly the Fireworks Fairy flew through the country leaving packages of fireworks for people to set off and this was widely believed to the point that people forgot all about the Declaration of Independence or the Founding Fathers. Would Sparkly the Fireworks Fairy add or detract from the true meaning of Independence Day?
They’re right that Santa can’t steal Christmas’ glory because he’s not real, but it’s partially about how the people are using Santa. In the Old Testament, God had Moses make a bronze serpent that God used to heal people of a plague, but by the time of King Hezekiah people had turn to worshiping that rather than God, so Hezekiah declared it Nehushtan, just a piece of brass.
Has Santa become like Nehushtan in American culture? Something that once aided in celebrating the true Spirit of Christmas but now has become a distraction from it. That’s a serious debate worth having..
Agreed with everything you said brother.
Oddly enough, I think the camera’s forced capture of Ernest’s glove-compartment bumper sticker was an attempt to make Christians look as silly as Ernest is. But of course, he’s very much the bumbling hero of the story, such as it is, so … fail?
Amen.
Yet I love your keywords: an, can, can, can. Instead of an implied: “always will.”
You bet he has. The solution there, however, is not “less Santa” but more Santa.
We need more about even the imaginary person and the wonder/magic/mystery associated with him, and less about the gifts, commercialism, and using the Santa myth as means to an end: getting the kids to shut up, or manufacturing Christmas.
Oddly enough, even cheesy Santa-centric Christmas movies aid in this struggle.
Watch a film such as The Santa Clause or even its sequel. Note how little emphasis is placed on the gifts as much as the person. Santa is less an icon and more of a person, as portrayed by Tim Allen who in the first film reluctantly “becomes” Santa and in the second film must keep the job he now loves. Moralism is strongly condemned in The Santa Clause 2, despite all the fantasy-silliness. Discerning viewers can for themselves, and for children, easily interpret Santa as a fantasy means of God’s common grace. Children in both films love Santa for who he is, not merely because he brings presents. The gifts lead to the giver. Sound familiar?
All this is merely a start. It’s an attempt that one may try to redeem the Santa myth. I’m not saying it will work every time or with every child. But then again, I don’t need to say that. All I need say is that this is a possible idea. Anyway, earlier I alluded to Father Christmas from The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, a textbook example of a Christian author brazenly, beautifully redeeming Santa for Christ’s glory in a fantasy story. That alone proves that yes, it can be done.
One of the discussions above brings up a good parallel point.
E. Stephen Burnett wrote:
Right, Christmas isn’t a wholly Christian holiday. It was a pagan holiday, and depending on your interpretation, it was either redeemed after the coming of Christianity to the West, or else the worldly church simply dressed up the paganism with Christian aesthetics.
In any case, the strictest of the no-Santa people are also lying to their children. By stripping away all the non-Christian cultural baggage, they’re telling their children that the holiday is all about baby Jesus, but that is not historically true. December 25th being the birthday of Jesus is just as mythological as the existence of Santa.
The only way to have a totally honest, totally Christian Christmas is not to observe Christmas at all.
dmdutcher wrote:
and later:
This is a radical statement!
I thought the “concrete” thinking that fairy tales were untrue and unworthy of the attention of intelligent people was a refined Modernist sentiment. That’s why fairy tales were considered children’s trivialities. Presumably, children could understand them better than adults.
I know I read an opinion from either Lewis or Tolkien that children were neither inherently more or inherently less “concrete” in their thinking than adults. (May have been in “On Fairy Stories” by Tolkien.) Children are merely less pretentious than adults.
Lewis said that the real reason is that they just went out of fashion. So, like old furniture gets put into a nursery, fairy tales were reserved for children. A good modern example would be sports stories. You find them often for kids, but much more rarely for adults.
“The High Reformed places such emphasis on propositional truth—beautiful in its own right!—that they have little time for unbound storytelling. Fundamentalists, in my experience, tend to be so narrowly biblical that anything not explicitly mentioned or sanctioned in the Scriptures is off-limits. (Elves using magic to guard Lothlórien just sounds pagan.)”
I am indeed hard-pressed to restrain my outrage at statements like this, this demeaning, mocking laughter directed at those of us who happen to believe that the Word of God indeed “binds” what we write. We are commanded to cast down every thought that exalts itself against the knowledge of God. This is not fundamentalist legalism, the “cry witch” of today leveled at anyone calling for biblical discernment in Christian fiction. There is no such thing as “unbound storytelling” that honors the God of all truth, anymore than “unbound conduct” gives glory to Christ. Anything not explicitly mentioned or sanctioned in the Word of God not only should be off limits, it IS off limits. This includes “speculations” that mock the power of God and/or seek to give us some sort of “new insight” into things God forbids and condemns. “Unbound” storytelling will never be biblical storytelling, and it is exactly this mentality permeating so much of the community today — anything goes — unbound — it’s okay, we’re just speculating — against the knowledge of God as revealed in His word.
Restricting speculation to subject matter covered in the Bible seems to go against our obligation to honestly seek truth with our whole hearts. Many human experiences are not mentioned in the Bible. I believe that the Bible describes the human condition and points us to the ultimate answer for our condition, but I don’t believe that the Bible provides all the answers to all the lesser things.
A couple thoughts here, HG:
More:
Regulative principle?
If so, then you really need to get off the internet, brother. Was you writing this comment “explicitly mentioned or sanctioned in the Word of God”?
We’re also in far more trouble than about Santa. Christmas itself is an abomination. So are pews in church, organs, guitars, hour-long sermons, church buildings, Sunday school, steeples, stained glass, or anything we enjoy as part of worship today but that aren’t mentioned or endorsed in the Bible. We should all hold them as pagan interlopers and refuse them, right? Of course, some have these exact same views. They fancy themselves “Biblical” for opposing things like steeples or hymnals. But I’m not sure what Bible they’re reading. The “regulative principle” or at least your notion that “anything not explicitly mentioned or sanctioned in the Word of God not only should be off limits” fails its own test! It itself is never sanctioned in God’s Word.
I’m not sure what you’re referring to here. We can certainly enjoy stories others share through the light of God’s Word, even if they contradict God’s Word. But if we are to over-narrow the topic to writing, yes, God’s Word must set our stories free. I do not speak of “binding” or limiting. In God’s standards is true freedom.
Again, we’re agreed. We would certainly be strong allies against the kinds of “speculations” that contradict what God’s Word does say: e.g. The Shack or the dangerous “nonfiction” devotional Jesus Calling. But we must not commit the same error they do and hold as “Biblical” things the Bible doesn’t actually say. And again, “regulative principle”-type thinking is itself utterly foreign to Scripture.