Monday, December 17, 2012
I save the Christmas cards I get in the mail from the many
charities that send me solicitations for donations. They begin to dribble in a little at a time
during the fall—diabetes Christmas cards, Alzheimer’s Christmas cards, cystic
fibrosis Christmas cards, you name it.
If there’s a disease or a cause, and they send me cards, I keep
them. Then when it’s time to send them out I grab the wad of them I’ve been saving and pick out the least
religious and kitschy of them, try to find matching envelopes, and voila, I’ve
got my cards. I try to choose my cards carefully from among this collection. I get lots of cards because
I give to a lot of causes. They want me
to give more, so they send me stuff relentlessly, which I really don’t think is
the best use of their money. I don’t
want them to spend it on Christmas cards and return address labels and wrapping
paper, all of which I could get at the dollar store. I want them to use the money to cure the
damned diseases. And make it snappy on
the Alzheimer’s, if you know what I mean.
The whole point of giving to a cause is undercut if you expect some little token of appreciation in return.
But they’ve probably done cost benefit analyses and determined that this
is the way to go in order to maximize their return. Induce a sense of obligation in advance and
you’ll get a better response. At least I
hope they’ve done that, even though it’s wasted on me.
Speaking of Christmas cards, the other day I noticed one
sitting on the table—not one I got from a charity, but one that came in the
mail from someone. It wasn’t for me, and
I glanced at it quickly and it looked religious, sort of Silent Nightish, and
that’s about all that registered in my mind at that moment. Then a day or two later I was walking by the
card, and I took a closer look and did a double take. On the front in a manger was the baby
Jesus, a pale halo over his little head.
Kneeling at the foot of the manger, over on the right side of the picture,
was Santa Claus, his wispy white hair sort of tousled, his nose and cheeks red,
looking for all the world like a repentant wino. He was holding his silly red elf hat between
his mittened hands. No other humans in
the picture—no Mary, no Joseph, no shepherds or wise men, just a couple of
sheep, a donkey, and a lop-eared goat, all minding their own business and
oblivious to the breathtaking sacredness of it all. Up in the sky in the center of the picture was the bright star that must have led old Saint Nick to the place where the holy
child was holed up. Inside the card it
said “Knowing the true meaning of Christmas blesses us all.”
Still it took some time to register. Then it hit me. Santa Claus and the baby Jesus, appearing on
the same stage? What the hell is going
on here? This wasn't something out of South Park, this was meant as a serious card from, I think, a seriously religious person. I don’t know about you, but
I’ve always been of the school that believes in keeping the “O Little Town of
Bethlehem” stuff separate from the “Ho Ho Ho” stuff. Call me a segregationist, a strict
constructionist, or a believer in the separation of silliness from nonsense. Oh, I know St. Nicholas is a saint
of the Catholic Church. At least he was
until he got demoted a few popes ago, along with St. Christopher and St. George
the dragon slayer. He was the patron
saint of thieves, sailors, children, and hookers, to name a few. A versatile guy. So there’s at least a tenuous connection
between the jolly old elf and the Christ child.
There are layers of meaning here. You could look at the picture and conclude
that Santa and the baby Jesus are engaged in a sort of private audience, like
when the pope meets with a world leader.
The parents and the shepherds and wise men were asked to leave the room
for a moment while these two ultimate icons of Christmas communed with one
another. Maybe the animals were asked to
leave too, but they refused, since it was, after all, their house. It’s a wonderful nod from the crass and sentimental side of the holiday in the direction of the sacred
side. The real question is which side is
which?
When I was a kid I did not believe in Santa Claus, as far as
I can remember. Not for a minute. First off, we had no fireplace. Our chimney came straight out of the oil-burning
furnace in the basement and up through the middle of the house, so that part of
the story didn’t resonate. Secondly, and
more importantly, my mother really couldn’t
let me believe in Santa, not that I probably would have anyway. This old guy playing Santa would come to our
front door on Christmas Eve, but she was always careful to tell me it was
really only Mr. Aderholt from down on Dixie Highway dressed as Santa. His motive of
course was kindly and good—to bring joy to little children. But let’s examine my mother’s motive for a
moment. The reason she told me the true identity of the guy wearing the Santa Claus outfit was not in case I might accidentally recognize Mr. Aderholt and then
became disillusioned about the existence of Santa. Oh no.
She told me so it would be clear, without her ever having to say it in
so many words, that there wasn’t a real Santa Claus, only people who dressed as Santa, the way one might
dress as Superman for Halloween or as a big stupid rabbit for Easter. Sooner or later I would have figured this out
on my own, but she was taking no chances. Still, I had to clean up my toys to get ready,
or Santa, a/k/a Mr. Aderholt, wouldn’t come. And I did want him to come, in spite of it all.
My mother was not a killjoy. (Well, yes she sort of was, in general, but she didn't mean to be.) The point she was at pains to make was that Christmas
was not about Santa Claus, but rather about the birth of Jesus Christ, the only
begotten son of God, born of the Virgin Mary, who suffered under Pontius Pilate,
was crucified, dead, and buried, who descended into Hell and on the third day
rose again from the dead, ascended into Heaven, and sitteth on the right hand of God the Father
Almighty, from whence he shall come to judge the quick and the dead, etc.
But mom was too clever by half, and it
backfired on her, or on me, depending on how you want to look at it. I mean, you tell me—how realistic is it that
you can tell a little kid there’s no such thing as Santa Claus but succeed in
getting him to believe that the story of the Virgin birth and all the rest of
the song and dance that goes along with that is a more probable version of
reality? The well was well and truly
poisoned, and I never believed in any of it. I was presented with a choice between two
equally absurd ideas, both of which required the suspension of belief in all
the observable rules of physical reality, and was told that one of them was
wrong. Was I supposed to then opt for
the second one, or instead to adopt the logic that had led me to reject the first
one? At least I was spared the pain of
disillusionment on both fronts. It am
still amazed when I hear from adults
about the moment they first realized there was no Santa Claus, because I can’t
imagine anyone having believed in the first place.
What my mom did wasn’t so bad, of course. The majority of people all over the world choose one kind of mumbo jumbo over another. Maybe
I would have been a skeptic and nonbeliever no matter what, always looking for life’s
little logical inconsistencies. Like why they
never sell the same number of hot dog buns in a package as the number of hot dogs in a package. Or how it is that if Johnny Cash shot a man
in Reno just to watch him die, he’s now doing
time in Folsom Prison in California , instead
of in some correctional facility in Nevada. Where’s the sense in that? Even if he fled across the state line, you'd think they would have extradited him. California has more than enough inmates already.
So, I shouldn’t give a damn one way or the other, but the
mixing of Santa Claus and Jesus in one picture still seems to me like a sort of
unholy mismatch. What makes it unholy,
I’m not sure. Who sullies whose
image? The kneeling Santa appears to be worshiping the infant Savior, but maybe Kris Kringle’s the one in charge, offering yet
another nifty gift to the world, something he pulled out of his bulging sack. The anachronism of it suggests the ability of
Santa to go back in time, in addition to his other super powers, like being able
to ride a sleigh through the air and visit every good boy and girl all in one
night. Meanwhile the baby Jesus is just
lying there with a halo on his head, stuck in his time and place, in the middle
of a bunch of smelly animals, doomed to a dusty Middle Eastern life and an
ignominious tortured death. Who has the
upper hand here? Santa, you figure,
after paying the proper obeisance or whatever, will be able to hop into his
sleigh and have Rudolph guide him back to the 21st century in time to do his thing
on Christmas Eve. When or if Jesus will
come again is anybody’s guess, but Santa Claus can be counted on to deliver the
goods each and every year.
Now you tell me.
Who should be worshiping whom?
