Good evening ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls of all ages! This is the big white man with the long white beard, and the red jacket; the one who knows whether you are awake or asleep, who knows whether you’ve been good or bad, the one with all the Hoh, Hoh, Hoh’s!
I’m the one who comes to your home in the night, the one you leave offerings for, milk of the holy cow, and sweet, tasty, morsels of cookie manna from ovens. You know what I like, and you aim to please me so that I shall reward you in the hereafter-coming year. That’s right, I’m Santa Clause, most people call me Santa, but just try moving that n to the end. You can see my Santa Claws. With just the move of that one letter, my letters transform into the name of that oft disparaged nemesis of the being who’s birth I come to remind you to celebrate! Satan? No, I’m Father Christmas. But you won’t find me in the Bible, nor will you find me in the North Pole.
Your parents, at some point, will probably fill you in on the fact that I’m not real, if you don’t figure it out for yourself. But it’s pretty amazing, considering how many pictures there are of me everywhere, or simply how many car commercials I show up in, that so many adults seem to know that I’m not real.
Well, they tell you I’m not real, but so many of you still leave me milk and cookies, so many of you bring your children to sit in my lap. What are you trying to do to yourselves?
Are you trying to train yourselves to believe in a white bearded being who flies through the clouds, surrounded by cherubs, I mean elves, and judges your actions and either punishes you with coal or no presents, or rewards you with stuff?
I’m just curious. This is a pretty incredible cultural phenomenon, in case you haven’t noticed. Just listen to all the Christmas music on the radio, see all those Jesus stories on TV, look at the big Christmas tree in Washington D.C., how about CNN, FOX News, and other news outlets, showing one Christmas related story after another? Christmas is a Christian Holiday, in case you didn’t know. Have you noted my remarkable resemblance to Jesus’s father, as depicted by Michelangelo, one of the first images of God in a simple Google search for God?
Weird, right?
Now go shopping, I command thee.
2 comments:
You nailed it. Photo of the traumatized boy captured by the leering demon initially strikes me as humorous from a "grown-up" vantage, but looking closer at the real terror in his eyes freezes your heart, gestures to the very human destruction of the routinely practiced cultural fantasies of which you write. Also, striking resemblance between the ancient depictions of Greek deities and paintings from the Renaissance of Christian characters. Thanks.
Thank you for the positive feedback. Encke, did you live in Aspen at one time?
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