Perspective: Why I Still Believe in Santa Claus

Merry Christmas from the Wayside!

I share these thoughts, hoping they are of help to someone else.

Why I Still Believe in Santa Claus

Scripture:

Then Jesus said to His host, "When you give a luncheon or dinner, do not invite your friends, your brothers or sisters, your relatives, or your rich neighbors; if you do, they may invite you back and so you will be repaid. But when you give a banquet, invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, the blind, and you will be blessed. Although they cannot repay you, you will be repaid at the resurrection of the righteous."

Luke 14:12-14 (CEB)

And in our world of plenty

We can spread a smile of joy

Throw your arms around the world

At Christmastime

From "Do They Know It's Christmas" by Band Aid

In my all-time favorite Christmas-themed television commercial, a little boy walks up to a marine in a dress blue uniform and says, "Excuse me... Excuse me, are you Santa Claus?" The marine doesn't say a word, remaining completely still and stone faced. The boy then says, "I heard you might be him." There is still no response from the marine. The boy then says, "If you are him, here's my list." The marine then discretely opens his hand to receive the boy's Christmas list. The boy gives the marine his list and walks away whispering, "He is Santa Claus."¹

This commercial is, of course, promoting the Toys for Tots program, which was started by Major William L. Hendricks in 1947. Run by the United States Marine Corps Reserve, this program collects and distributes toys for children whose parents cannot afford Christmas presents.² Though people do not always agree on which military actions are right, I believe that the Toys for Tots program is one military operation that all of us can approve.

I think that this poignant television commercial makes an interesting statement about the identity of Santa Claus.

When I was a child, on Christmas mornings I would find around the Christmas tree a bunch of unwrapped gifts that were not there the night before. Supposedly the gifts were brought by Santa Claus during the night. As the story goes, Santa Claus, usually depicted as a jolly, somewhat-fat man wearing a red suit, lives at the North Pole and builds toys with a staff of elven workers. On Christmas Eve, he sets out on a sleigh pulled by eight flying reindeer to deliver the toys to the well-behaved children of the world. Some news and weather stations even track Santa's movements.

Eventually I came to realize that it was, in fact, my mother who left the gifts around the tree during the night and enjoyed the milk and cookies I left for Santa.³ Nevertheless, I still believe in Santa Claus, though not in the same way I did as a child.

Nicholas of Myra was born to a wealthy family in the third century A.D. in Asia Minor, the region now known as Turkey. When he lost his parents at a young age, he was taken in by his uncle, a bishop in the church. Nicholas himself became a priest, and, while he was still young, he became the bishop of the town of Myra.⁴ Nicholas was a man who loved God and understood that what a person does for someone in need the person does for Christ, for he used the wealth he inherited to help the poor.⁵ In fact, he was known most of all for his acts of charity.

One story tells of a man who had three daughters. Because the man could not afford to provide dowries for his daughters, they would have probably remained unmarried and would have likely ended up becoming prostitutes to survive. Nicholas learned of the family's plight, and, and on the nights before each daughter came of marriageable age, he secretly threw a bag of gold into the house. When the youngest daughter came of age, the father awaited the secret benefactor so that he might thank him. When he confronted Nicholas, Nicholas told him to thank God instead.⁶

Eventually Nicholas was canonized as a saint, and December 6, the Feast of St. Nicholas, became a day when people would do anonymous acts of kindness for people in need.⁷ The name Santa Claus is derived from the name Saint Nicholas, and it is from the ancient stories of St. Nicholas that our stories of Santa Claus evolved.

Nowadays Santa Claus has become a symbol of materialism at Christmas. Shopping malls and retailers around the country host men dressed as Santa Claus in mock "Santa's Workshops" as a ploy to get parents of young children into stores to do some shopping. Children tell these Santa look-alikes what toys they want for Christmas, and the parents, in turn, buy these toys for their children. Retailers start this process earlier and earlier each year. This year, the "Santa's Workshop" at the mall in my town was actually set up a few days before Halloween.

I think that Christians need to reclaim Santa Claus - or St. Nicholas - as a symbol of acts of kindness toward those in need. I think that at Christmas we need to remember not only the good children - namely one's own children - but also the children of the needy. Author and pastor Adam Hamilton recommends giving to charity at least the same amount of money one spends on presents for one's friends and family.⁸ One charity I like to support at Christmas is Triune Mercy Center, a non-denominational church in my town that serves the homeless and the needy.⁹

In Chicken Soup for the Christian Soul, writer William J. Lederer tells the story of a time he was stuck in a California airport terminal on Christmas Eve, trying to get home to Honolulu. William has been asked to write a story titled "Is there a Santa Claus?" for the children in his neighborhood, and he is was worried about answering the question honestly. Amid the panicked masses in the airport terminal, he watches an older, jolly, round man offer people cheerful words of encouragement and give people hot coffee and other amenities from a homemade pushcart. He decides to assist the odd old man and learns that the man spends his vacation time at Christmas each year helping stressed travelers. The writer is able to honestly tell the neighborhood children that there is indeed a Santa Claus.¹⁰

I still believe in Santa Claus, because, when we follow the example of a saint who has gone before us, the saint lives on in us. The real Santa Claus is not some magical person who lives at the North Pole or some man in a red suit at a local shopping mall. The real Santa Claus is a person who cheerfully serves irritable and panicked people in a crowded airport terminal, a marine who delivers toys to needy children, or any person performs any act of kindness for someone in need.

In recent years, as more and more people have started saying "Happy Holidays" instead of "Merry Christmas," many people have been fighting to "keep 'Christ' in Christmas." In my opinion, we cannot truly keep Christ in Christmas unless we remember the poor, the hungry, the sick, and the lonely, because these are the people with whom Christ directly identifies.¹¹ Christ says, "I was hungry and you gave me food to eat. I was thirsty and you gave me a drink. I was a stranger and you welcomed me. I was naked and you gave me clothes to wear. I was sick and you took care of me. I was in prison and you visited me... I assure you that when you have done it for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you have done it for me."¹²

May you have a merry Christmas, and, as you spend some time with your friends and family, may you also remember the needy in your midst.


Notes:
1 - You know you want to watch it: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U3k1SOE760Y
2 - Wikipedia: Toys for Tots
3 - Actually, my mom hates milk, so she may have poured the milk down the drain.
4 - Wikipedia: Saint Nicholas (Section: Life)
5 - St. Nicholas Center: "Who Is Saint Nicholas?"
6 - Wikipedia: Saint Nicholas (Section: Legends and Folklore)
7 - Wikipedia: Saint Nicholas (Section: Formal Veneration)
8 - Adam Hamilton. The Journey: Walking the Road to Bethlehem. 2011, Abingdon Press. ch 3
9 - http://triunemercy.org/
10 - William J. Lederer.  "Is There a Santa Claus?" Published in Chicken Soup for the Christian Soul. 1997, Health Communications, Inc.  pp 84-88
11 - For more thoughts on this subject see my previous Christmas perspective, "How to truly keep Christ in Christmas."
12 - Matthew 25:35-36,40 (CEB)


If you have any feedback, thoughts, stories, or even arguments to contribute, please leave comments.

Introspection: There Is No Wonderwall

I share these thoughts hoping they are of help to someone else.

There Is No Wonderwall

Scripture:

Therefore, my loved ones... carry out your own salvation with fear and trembling. God is the one who enables you both to want and to actually live out His good purposes.

Philippians 2:12-13 (CEB)

But "happily ever after" fails

And we've been poisoned by these fairy tales

From "End of the Innocence" by Don Henley

One Tuesday evening a few years ago, I attended one of the Furman Wesley Fellowship's weekly meetings. I do not remember the topic of discussion for the evening, but I remember that we went off on a tangent when one girl mentioned the song "Wonderwall" by the British rock group Oasis. She suggested that the song could be understood in a spiritual light. I had never heard the song, and I did not really think too much about the discussion afterward. Not long ago, this particular song was brought to my attention again. When I went to my Bible study group's Halloween party, I watched three women play the video game "Rock Band" and saw them "performing" this very song. A few days after that, I heard the song on the radio.

I decided to purchase this song on the Internet, along with "Champagne Supernova," another song by the same group. What strikes me the most about "Wonderwall," aside from the beautifully haunting keyboard solo at the end, is the chorus.

Because maybe

You're gonna be the one that saves me

And after all

You're my wonderwall

I'm the type of guy who actually pays attention to song lyrics. In fact, if I listen to a song enough times, I will memorize the lyrics. Remembering what my friends said about "Wonderwall" a few years ago, I naturally decided to research the meaning of the song. I found that the song has a rather interesting story.

"Wonderwall," recorded in 1995, was written by the group's lead guitarist Noel Gallagher. He claimed in a 1996 magazine interview that the song was about his girlfriend.¹ The two married in 1997, but, around four years later, they divorced. After the divorce, Gallagher began to claim that "Wonderwall" was never about his girlfriend at all. He said, "It's a song about an imaginary friend who's gonna come and save you from yourself."²

At first Gallagher claimed that the words he wrote were for his girlfriend, but, years later, he claimed they were about "an imaginary friend," in other words, someone who doesn't even exist. Perhaps he was being truthful when he said that the song was never about his girlfriend, but I cannot help but read a certain disillusionment into this story. I cannot help but wonder if this artist came to a very painful realization in the years after he wrote the song.

This is a kind of disillusionment that hits very close to home for me.

I believe that many of us have fallen for a very flawed understanding of romantic love - an understanding that is as destructive as it is unrealistic. This sentiment is quite prevalent in our culture: we hear it in love songs and see it in romantic movies.

This particular line of thinking can been seen well in the 1996 film Jerry Maguire when the titular character, played by Tom Cruise, tells the woman he loves, played by Renée Zellweger, "You complete me."

Our culture leads us to believe that there is someone out there who will "save" us from something, "complete" us in some way, or bring us true happiness. It's only natural that we would want to believe this way because we are all painfully aware that we are flawed, imperfect, incomplete, fractured, and broken. Perhaps it could be said that sometimes romantic love is presented like a math equation.

We are taught by our culture that romantic love is a path to wholeness. We are led to believe that two people, when they fall in love, somehow complete each other in the same way that two halves equal a whole. Some people even refer to their significant others as their "better half."

What if romantic love is less like an addition equation, and more like a multiplication equation. After all, did God not say to Adam and Eve, "Be fruitful and multiply"?³

What if two broken people seeking completeness in each other do not make each other whole but rather leave each other feeling all the more fractured, broken, and empty?

I believe that many of us seek romantic love or marriage as a cure to all of life's problems. I have to admit that I am guilty of the same thing. I often feel lonely and insecure, and I keep hoping to meet a woman who will save me from my loneliness and prove to me that I have no reason to feel insecure about myself. The problem with this line of thinking is that, when two people build a relationship with each other, they bring their problems into the relationship with them. I wonder if so many people get divorced because the people they married were unable to meet their unreasonable hopes and expectations.

The problem is that we seek saviors instead of partners,

and that is way too much to ask of another person.

I think that romantic love and wholeness are both very good things to seek in life, but I also think that one should not seek romantic love as a means to achieving wholeness. If a person is not complete without a significant other, he or she will not be complete with one. Another person cannot save you, fix you, or make you whole. There are simply some things that must be worked out solely between an individual and God.

In my case, I need to take it to heart that finding a girlfriend will not solve any of my problems. If I feel isolated and insecure without a girlfriend, who's to say that I won't feel isolated and insecure with one. If anything, these problems have sabotaged my search for a romance: after all, people can smell desperation, and people know when you're needy. I must deal with my loneliness and insecurity apart from my search for a girlfriend.

I believe that the pursuit of romantic love is not a search for someone to make one complete but a search for someone with whom to share one's life. A marriage is not two people becoming whole with each other but two people pledging to share their whole lives with each other. I once heard my philosophy professor say that one cannot share one's life with another person unless one has a life to share. Marriage is about sharing all aspects of life: the better and the worse, sickness and health, wholeness and brokenness. Marital love, like all kinds of love, "bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things."⁴

In a marriage, when one person experiences brokenness, it is felt by both. One song that I think describes marital love well is "Her Diamonds." This song was written by Matchbox Twenty frontman Rob Thomas for his wife who suffers from an auto-immune disease. The song describes her struggles with the disease and his own struggles trying to comfort her and trying to be strong for her.⁵

By the light of the moon

She rubs her eyes

Sits down on the bed and starts to cry

And there's something less about her

And I don't know what I'm supposed to do

So I sit down and I cry too

And don't let her see

According to the song, when Thomas sees his wife in pain, he doesn't know what to do but to suffer with her. This is the literal definition of compassion.

We are all broken, and we all want to be made whole, but we cannot expect another person to achieve this for us. St. Paul writes that each of us must work out his or her own salvation with the utmost diligence - or, in his words, "fear and trembling." If you seek healing from your brokenness, I urge you to offer your brokenness to God. Please realize that I am not offering God as some pat answer. The journey to spiritual completeness - called sanctification by some - is long and difficult, but I do believe that God will lead us to healing and wholeness if we are willing to follow.

I like the song "Wonderwall." I like it not as a love song, but as a reminder that wholeness is not found in a companion but on a personal journey with God.


Notes:
1 - Wikipedia: Wonderwall (song)
2 - BBC News World Edition: "Noel: Wonderwall 'not about Meg.'" October 17, 2002.
3 - That was a tongue-in-cheek reference to Genesis 1:28.
4 - 1 Corinthians 13:7 (NRSV)
5 - Wikipedia: Her Diamonds


If you have any feedback, thoughts, stories, or even arguments to contribute, please leave comments.