In defence of Christmas.

For all the talk about Santa/Father Christmas as a harbinger of a total commercialisation of Christmas, I'd like to actually take some time to talk about what I think this figure means. I think that Santa fills an important role in the Feast of the Nativity in that he is in effect the tutelary deity or prime spirit involved in what amounts to a sacramentalisation of childhood, the same childhood that is seen and worshipped in the infant Christ.

When a parent reads a letter that a child has written to Santa and answers it with gifts, that parent is, in that moment, Santa Claus, in the sense that Santa becomes a role that the parent plays in a mystery play of the child's devising and for the child's benefit. In this role the parent absorbs the mythos of a benefactor and a comforter, whose operation in the enjoyment of the holiday is in effect a translation into material terms of the operation of the Holy Ghost in the enjoyment of spiritual graces. To a large extent the scruples and dedication of the parent are measured, by the child, in a subconscious examination of how this role is filled. The parent in effect becomes a household god, balancing this role with his or her role in the quotidian family unit and thus attaining a sort of priesthood, a position between Earth and Heaven in other times of the year reserved for more formalised religious functionalities.

It's only later that the child's evolving understanding of the spirit of giving and of the nature of parenthood allows for the roles that the parent plays to be collapsed into a more earthly understanding of generosity and the giving of gifts as operations that occur within and lend beauty to the everyday world. In this part of the system the role of Santa goes into abeyance as the child and the parent (and other gift-givers) enter into a more one-on-one relationship of exchange.

Later on, if the child becomes a parent or even just has children in his or her life as an adult, he or she likewise will come into the Santa role, having prepared the child or children for the nature of the mythos as an inheritance from the generation before.

This is not to say the system is not commercialised or filled with shit, because it is, by advertisers among others. But at its heart, the role of Santa in Christmas is a very strong and very real signifier of the transmission of the ideas and experiences of childhood, and as such is certainly relevant to the celebration of the Nativity and God-as-Child.