Santa is a mythical character. I'm not saying St. Nicholas of Cusa didn't exist, that he's not the patron saint of sailors and lost children, or that he didn't move to the North Pole, buy a red suit, gain weight, and get the whole Christmas thing going. I am saying. however, that he is suspiciously like Jesus. In fact, I'm thinking Dan Brown should get going on this one: The Christmas Code.
First off, they were both bearded, swarthy Mediterranean males (Yes, Megyn, there was a Santa Claus, and he was swarthy) who actually lived but took on mythic proportions. One said you had to become like a child, and said "let the little children come to me, for of such is the kingdom of God." The other lets us bring our children to him to sit on his lap to ask for things. They both live in inaccessible places, one in heaven, one in the North Pole. They both know who has been naughty or nice, though one of them only punishes naughtiness with coal; the other one lights that coal and roasts you in it for all eternity if you don't accept him, though I'm thinking he probably got over that since he moved to the North Pole. He needs that coal to stay warm.
Both men have extraordinary powers of visitation: Santa can receive the requests of every child on earth, and visit them all in one night. Jesus said, wherever two or three of you are gathered together, I am in their midst." They both promise action: Santa brings what you ask for, and Jesus said "you may ask me for anything in my name, and I will do it."
One has innumerable elves working for him, the other claimed he could have called 10,000 angels to rescue him from the cross. Did these angels, post resurrection, move with him to the North Pole and get busy making toys? Were they trying to somehow make up for not saving him? I'm just asking. Jesus had twelve apostles to help him spread his message, Santa has nine reindeer that help him spread his cheer. I'm not sure how the apostles were transmuted to reindeer, but it's clear that three of them refused. I'm thinking Thaddeus, Simon the Zealot, and Philip, or maybe Skip, the latecomer replacement for Judas who clearly didn't know what he was getting into.
Jesus miraculously descended into hell, rose again, and ascended into heaven. Santa descends down the hell of countless chimneys, climbs back up, then ascends into the heavens in his sleigh. Jesus promised to return. Santa actually does return, every year.
Jesus commanded a commemorative meal of bread and wine, Santa requires milk and cookies. The bread and wine transubstantiate into Jesus' body and blood, and transform his followers into his body; the milk and cookies are transformed, through the miracle of digestion, into Santa's mythic shaking belly.
Santa, says "Ho, ho ho, merry Christmas!" Jesus said "Woe, woe, woe unto you Scribes and Pharisees;" however I believe he grew tired of pronouncing woe. No one really wants to be to be a woe pronouncer. Why? Obviously, because no one likes a woe pronouncer. But a "Ho, ho, ho!" pronuncer is an entirely different kind of pronouncer. A horse of a different pronouncement. The kind of pronouncer everyone likes. Everyone, except Uncle Scrooge. But even he was converted in the end, as will be all Jews when they get sick of dreidels and Hanukkah, and Muslims when they get sick of those Pillars and all that fasting during Ramadan, and Jehovah's Witnesses when they get sick and tired of never, ever celebrating one damn, freaking thing. We'll all be Santaclausians one day.
I put all of this to a therapist friend who suggested that what we have here is a mythic case of PTSD. "This Santa-Jesus," she said, "is annually reenacting his traumatic earthly existence, obsessively, in countless chimneys, with countless glasses of milk and plates of cookies . . . giving, giving, giving, then giving again; and eating cookies over and over and over until he loses those cookies, somewhere over Northern Canada, until he's actually a black Santa from all the carbon in all of those chimneys [Yes Megyn, there is a Santa Claus, and he's entirely black by Christmas morning]. He can't help himself. You see, when mythical characters suffer, it takes on mythical proportions. They work it out in and through another myth; and it can take many, many centuries."
It will all work out. I'm sure of it. Merry Christmas.
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1 comment:
This is delightful and (kind of) blasphemous all at once. How do you do it, Mr. Patterson? Find ways to phrase things and to explain them in almost irrefutable terms. I cannot say; only that you do.
I do not like to laugh at things about Jesus especially at the time we Christians are celebrating His birth' once of two miraculous times of year for us. And yet, you made me laugh against my own will and better judgement because so much of what you said was,indeed,funny and delightful.
I cannot draw the same conclusions as you have, but I do so enjoy the way you draw them.
Merry Christmas to you right back.
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