On Santa Claus · 10:22pm Dec 22nd, 2020
I've never believed in Santa Clause. I knew the story of course, but my parents just never bothered trying to convince me he was real in any way or anything like that. I can't say I blame 'em. Not to sound selfish, but if I'm gonna be splurging money on gifts for my kids, I at least want to get my due credit for it.
All that besides, I legit think the Santa myth is getting progressively harder to make plausible as time goes on. Chimney's are all but gone or too small to fit someone down them. We use heating systems now. The Arctic is melting. All that jazz.
Now I'm not saying that there isn't fun to be had without Santa Claus. He's one of Christmas's biggest icons (the other one of course being baby Jesus); it wouldn't be quite the same without him at this point, I don't think.
But perhaps maybe Santa can continue in spirit rather than as a story-spun-as-truth to get kids to behave.
Think about it: Santa's whole shtick is that he's a generally nice guy who shows compassion and kindness to others. What a great role model. So perhaps instead of telling kids "be good so Santa will bring you presents", we should be telling them to be like Santa Claus.
Just my two cents on Jolly Old Saint Nick.
It's not about the plausibility of the myth to me, just what the myth represents. Generosity, kindness, during a traditionally bleak and cold time of the year... Santa's in some ways almost like a wintertime Superman. He's just a good guy.
Personally, I've always believed that Santa Claus was real. Largely because, every Christmas, I would often find gifts that are all but impossible to actually get. As a matter of fact, this one time I got a ping-pong table, and based on my knowledge alone they're pretty expensive for a person of middle class to get. Another time, I heard one of my dogs barking because someone was in the house, and he rarely did that when it was someone he knew.
That being said, aside from him and Jesus, there are things that I believe aren't real at all. Global warming is something I've always saw as nothing but a scam and a con, and Bigfoot is a creature that people seem to constantly try to prove to be real but never do.
I've never understood the frankly absurd impulse to tell children Santa's real. Why does he have to be real? He's perfectly fine as a familiar fictional icon to represent all that's jolly about the season; isn't that enough without lying under moral pretensions? Because yeah, the bit that ticks me off the most is the moralism around the whole "Santa is real and you're a bad, cynical person if you don't believe in him" bullshit.
It comes to a head in stuff like "Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus", which contains an obnoxious combination of anti-modern wishful thinking and crude emotional appeals, and which ends up being either dishonest or delusional in the process.
Especially in fiction which tries to say he's blatantly real but people don't believe in him, it doesn't really work as a narrative device (for instance, where the hell do the parents think the presents come from, then?). Either make it realistic, or just have your world where Santa is an accepted part of that fictional universe's life. It'd avoid so many bizarre logical snarls that way.
Have you ever noticed that quite a few stories that parents tell their kids are told just to incentivize their children into behaving?
5420086
That's actually exactly what I was thinking of.
5420088
Nah, Santa ain't real. Parents are the real heroes of Christmas.
Bigfoot totally is real though, and somewhere out there he's in his cabin way up in the mountains sitting at his computer and getting a good chuckle out of trolling all the people trying to prove his existence.
5420139
Eh, I don't think so.
5420129
Yeah, they're kind of lazy that way. :P
5420141
That was a joke.
5420142
I know. I just simply played along with it.
5420143
Not really, that was more of a blunt refutation of it.
5420090
I think it's fine in movies most of the time, but it kinda piles on with the logic bombs the older one gets (They also fail to explain why he doesn't drop by in places like Saudi Arabia and why it only seems to be the United States and all).
What would be kind of neat if there's a story where somebody doesn't believe in Santa, but then it turns out he's real but he's not active anymore, having retired because there's enough people out there who are willing to be good and kind to one another that he got his point across long ago.
5420144
What do you mean?
5420146
That would be a creative twist, and a good way to play around with the formula while still making some sense.
5420146
Well, pardon me for butting in, but I can say that does kind of happen in one comic I have. The series "Klaus" by Dark Horse (after the original series telling the origins of Santa) has put out issues each December as a different kind of "Christmas special." In the very first one of those winter specials, Santa outright admits to a parent who encounters him that he gave up delivering presents to all the kids centuries ago, because the population had just grown too big for him to do such work in a single night.
I'd very much recommend the original "Klaus" miniseries. I put up a review of it earlier this month in the Marvel/DC group.
While the Santa we know and love is mostly a myth, all myths do have a kernal of actual lore behind it one way or another, and the St. Nick we know now was actually based off the story of an actual saint who helped a struggling father with 3 daughters back in Byzantine times.
5420181
Even more interesting was that the same Saint Nicholas was historically one of the bishops who congregated for the Council of Nicea in A.D. 325, and thus signed the Nicene Creed. I never would have guessed if I hadn't looked it up myself.
In the film Arthur Christmas, one of the really interesting ideas was that the "Santa Claus" was a hereditary role, which could trace itself all the way back to "Saint Nick" himself. Nicely mirrors the real-world development of the mythos of Santa Claus from the original historical person.
Think of every grainy 'photo' you ever saw that had a 'maybe Bigfoot' in it.
Do any of them also have Santa in then?
Dun dun dun