We’ve fooled around long enough. Santa has been waging a war on Jesus for years and it’s time we draw our line in the sand. Merry Xmas? Happy Holidays? Spit. Is Christmas about Jesus or is Christmas about Santa? This is America, there’s no room for nuance. It’s time for a showdown between the two biggest figures in the Christmas tradition. Loser has to get an Android phone. May the most realistic character win.
Jesus vs. Santa- a brief personal history
I was raised that Jesus is the reason for the season. Specifically the Christmas season, but probably the rest of the seasons too. I guess he’s not the reason for the various pagan holidays that pre-date Christianity and coincide with December 25th. But in Montana, America, circa 1993, he was the reason for the season.
Christmas is about Jesus getting the birthday party he deserves. Somehow Santa weaseled his way into the party simply by spreading Holiday cheer and a general sense of joy. We won’t stand for it.
Santa is just Satan’s name mixed around a little bit. Don’t be fooled by the free gifts and jolly demeanor, Santa is not a good person. My dad was very anti-Santa pretty much from the word go. I’m not saying he didn’t get a BB gun for Christmas as an 8-year-old when it was the only thing on his list, but I’m not saying he did. He still is anti-Santa, but he’s more concerned with the liberals ruining America, so I don’t think he thinks about Santa all that much. Make no mistake about it though, Santa has been continually trying to ruin Christmas my entire life.
Fun Fact: One year my brother and I were fighting about something and my mom unsarcastically said, "You're ruining Christmas." Now it's something we say to each other every fifteen or twenty minutes in and around the holiday season and any other time one of us messes up during the year. My mom gets a real kick out of being quoted so much.
Even though my dad was anti-Santa, my mom would sneak us presents from the North Pole so we didn’t feel left out because she’s a saint. We also got presents from the family dog and the dog got presents from us. Santa probably even got a gift from our dog. My mom is the best person anyone knows.
Anyway.
Despite the plethora of gifts from questionable sources, my parents did a great job of making sure we didn’t think Christmas is just about receiving gifts. It’s about more than that. Christmas is about spending time with family, contemplating the birth of baby Jesus, and eating oyster stew because it’s what grandpa likes. There were a lot of gifts, though.
Big Santa gets another victim
As I grew older—and Santa morphed from this thing I kind of wish I was allowed to believe in, to this thing I definitely knew didn’t make any logical sense—I started to have questions about why Jesus was so admired but Santa was such a bad guy. Big Santa had gotten to me. As much as I tried to accept the narrative I was told without question the propaganda machine ran my frail 9-year-old body over like a caribou-driven mac truck. Despite being taught the truth of Santa’s shady underbelly, he just seemed like a pretty likable character.
This, of course, was ridiculous because Santa is clearly not likable or real. We know he’s not real because Christmas isn’t always ruined, unless by myself or my brother. If he was real Christmas would be ruined every year. It’s basic logic. That’s why we don’t like him. Childhood me just needed to let Jesus fill that Santa shaped void in my heart.
Unless, of course, Santa actually is real, but contrary to popular belief he’s not trying to ruin Christmas. Maybe we just weren’t listening to the still small voice in our hearts that lets us know—despite what modern ‘science’ would say—Santa really IS real.
So, to recap: It’s super important to believe in Jesus and it’s equally important to NOT believe in Santa. This is despite the fact that the two—obviously real Jesus and obviously not real Santa—share a lot of similarities.
Here’s just a few of them…
Assuming they are both real, what’s that look like? Both Jesus and Santa know everything I do. How else would they know if I’ve been naughty or nice? But do either/both of them watch EVERYTHING I do? What about when I masturbate or poop? Do they look away or just keep awkwardly watching? Since both of them are there do they strike up a conversation to make it less weird or ignore each other? I wonder if they both think the other is kind of creepy.
Did you notice how in the first picture I wrote Decider of Moral Compliance twice? That was a test to see if you actually read them all. I thought about them for a long time so I hope you read them. Also, the picture of Santa and Jesus watching me masturbate might be my favorite picture of all-time.
But they also have a lot of differences.
Jesus tends to eat better, be more concerned with the afterlife and I’m pretty sure he’s a Republican. Santa enjoys the finer things of life a lot more. He’s got a wife, eats cookies, works for himself, and always seems to be in a pretty good mood.
On paper, Santa should be more popular, but people only really think about Santa once a year. People think about Jesus ALL. THE. TIME. In the summer Santa’s friends are nowhere to be found. Half the country claims to be best friends with Jesus. Lots of people talk with Jesus almost every day.
Thoughts on Belief
It’s hard to figure out how we landed on what to believe and why. I always run up against a brick wall when trying to figure out if I decided what to believe or if I just believed it without much choice. I’m supposed to choose NOT to believe in Santa, but I’m supposed to choose to believe in Jesus.
Not believing in Santa wasn’t so hard, it just kind of happened naturally. Once I stopped believing in Santa I had no ability to re-choose to believe in him. Belief in Santa didn’t feel like a conscious choice at all. Thoughts popped into my brain without my consent and led me down the path of Santa atheism. Luckily that wasn’t met with much in-group friction.
But to choose to not believe in Jesus is a much bigger deal.
At the tender age of 33 1/2, I still look up at the night sky and think, “Well, maybe…” when it comes to Jesus. I just can’t pull the trigger of unbelief like I could with Santa. Several members of my family don’t even ask maybe. To them, Jesus is as real as the kitchen table.
How is one a choice while the other is just a fact of life? I wonder if more people would believe in Santa if he had a better punishment situation. Giving kids small amounts of fossil fuels just doesn’t seem to be scary enough.
So Jesus clearly wins on the punishment side, but what about the reward side of things?
There’s a tangible benefit to believing in Santa—Christmas presents—but getting a reward isn’t a very good reason to believe in something. Plus, Christmas only comes around once a year. Still, they are pretty fun.
But it gets tricky to pin down exactly why people believe in Jesus. Jesus gives us hope for the future—via his no-strings-attached free gift of eternal life—but in his case, the reward of heaven [and the avoidance of hell] is deemed a pretty smart reason to believe.
Santa gives his rewards yearly whereas with Jesus it’s kind of a delayed gratification thing. I think most of the reward for believing in Jesus is actually just avoiding the punishment for not believing in him. Nobody believes in Santa just to avoid some coal.
Jesus really benefits from Pascal’s Wager where Santa just doesn’t have that kind of philosophical juice behind him.
Once you stopped believing in Santa you were considered a big boy. But it was only after you started believing in Jesus that you attained such status. With Santa, your childlike faith is looked down on as nothing more than silly superstition. Kids only believe in Santa because they’re too dumb to know any better. The Bible actually promotes having a childlike faith when it comes to Jesus. I’m not drawing parallels.
Loving Santa = Embarrassing
Kids really love free shit so they’re naturally pretty drawn to Santa. It’s like they have no intellectual integrity. How embarrassing.
This can be really annoying if you’re a parent who wants your kid to think about Jesus during Christmas, or if you’re a parent who’s been eating rice for three months in order to pay for some fancy electronic only to find your dumb ass kid gives all the credit to Santa. That would be like if you went to medical school for years in order to learn how to do surgery and then people just gave Jesus all the credit for your patient’s successful recovery. Frustrating.
If you’re in this situation as a parent you’re probably pretty tempted to remind your kid that you guys don’t even have a chimney.
Loving Jesus = Pretty Grown up Thing to Do
Jesus doesn’t really steal any of our parental thunder. As parents, we don’t get a lot of say in what happens to our children in the afterlife, so we have to rely on Jesus. So if your kid informs you they’re pretty wild about Jesus you’re probably not super tempted to pick apart your child’s rationale.
But Jesus isn’t great with the whole present situation. In fact, from the standpoint of a child, there’s not a lot of reason to love Jesus. That is until the concept of hell is introduced. Once you know the possibility of spending eternity in anguish exists it becomes much easier to fall deeply, madly in love with Jesus.
The whole in-group/out-group thing really made Jesus the clear winner.
Growing up religious makes for a fun magical world that I didn’t fully appreciate. As an adult, I don’t get to have these two worlds play equal roles in my head. Every time I try to convince myself the Bible makes logical sense I think, Santa couldn’t possibly visit every house in a single night.
When you’re religious you get to scoff at the Santa story as an obvious fable, but you’re still really into the Jesus story. God created a bunch of monkeys—that apparently look very similar to him—gave them anxiety, and will eventually send several to hell for failing to overcome their in-group/out-group social attachments and believe in an invisible God they have never seen, heard, felt, or witnessed. Because the monkeys wouldn’t stop throwing shit at each other God sent his Son down so they could sacrifice him and thus have their shit throwing forgiven. This makes sense. Visiting every house in a single night? Come on.
I’m not anti-Santa or anti-Jesus. I think they both play a part in today’s complex world. It makes me happy when kids talk about believing in Santa because that means the world is still magical to them. It also makes me happy when adults really believe Jesus is their best friend because the world is just as magical to them.
I don’t think there’s any reason to be afraid of Santa. Jumping on the Santa train doesn’t mean you’re trying to take the Christ out of Xmas. It just means you want kids to believe in magic before you ruin their childhood by explaining how sugar works.
If you’re one of those people chanting about Jesus is the reason just calm down. Yes, he’s the reason. But also, he kinda sucks at making Christmas exciting. Santa is more fun. Let’s keep them both around.
Next: On God Part IX- How many Worlds Did God Create?
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