God and Santa and love

Creative Minority Report is a "Catholic" blog, or maybe it would be better to say a blog written by a Roman Catholic.

Yesterday, CMR posted a fascinating article called "Yes Virginia, Fr. Made Me Mad Because..."

"Fr." refers to a priest known as Father Look At ME, or LAME, for short. Father LAME is a pain-in-the-ass priest who visits the parish in question on occasion and who the writer faults for a variety of antics... "including ad libbing Eucharistic prayers, interrupting the liturgy to tell a story, walking all over the church during his ridiculously long and pointless homilies, and making a John & Yoko lovefest out of the Sign of Peace," all of which "scream Look At Me rather than look to Jesus."

But what really got the CMR writer in a mass-ive snit was when LAME told the congregation about the rumor that there is no Santa Claus. CMR's writer has two young children who still believe!

LAME told "the story of a boy who was questioning Santa Claus. All his friends had stopped believing so the troubled boy went to his Gramma to find out the truth. Gramma always tells the truth you see. like when she says her cookies are world famous, they must be because Gramma says so. ...

"Gramma tells the little boy that there is a Santa. Santa is when we show love and charity to our neighbor. She illustrates it by having the little boy buy a coat for a needy boy in his class. See, Bobby, there is a Santa Claus. Santa Claus is every time we love a neighbor."


Our writer is having none of this. "Bah Humbug," saith he. "Sorry Gramma. Sorry Fr. LAME. Santa is a fat bearded guy that comes down my chimney on Christmas Eve to deliver presents to good boys and girls. That is what I have been telling my kids. What gives you the right to ruin it?"


We could have a lot of fun with this. As youngsters, many of us could not, in a million years, have differentiated God from Santa Claus, other than Santa came by at Christmas time and God, well, we never really caught a glimpse of him except in old photos in old bibles.

And, like Santa, those old photos pictured God as a fat, bearded guy who lived "up" in heaven somewhere and for damn sure knew when you were naughty or nice!


But then we grew up. Many of us dumped Santa, but kept God. Mostly because that's what our parents had done. And parents know best. But occasionally, we questioned whether Santa ... oops, God, was real.

It was a question that, among the more rigid and fundamentalist cultic expressions of Christianity, would often be addressed by an expression of horror, and a further question: "How can you even ask such a thing?" "You gotta have faith," would be another response. "Faith is a leap." "Just believe and you'll know in your heart." "Because we say so!" was quite common.

Among the more liberal Christians, when asked how one could be certain of the existence of God, they would say quite the same thing as did Fr. LAME about Santa. You can see God in the love people have for one another. Acts of love are how God works in the world. Jesus took it a step further suggesting to his disciples that people would know they loved him if they loved one another.

Yesterday, we wrote of the Anglican Archbishop, Rowan Williams, who said at Auschwitz that "Our faiths speak of God through telling the stories of specific people in actual places; it is in these particulars that we learn of God." God, said the Archbishop, was "discerned in acts of solidarity and love."


Maybe Fr. LAME was right. For many, Santa is a metaphor for God. Maybe, for many, that's the only "god" they will ever know -- the one perceived when people carry out acts of charity.

But isn't that what the Church has has been saying for years: God is Love?

Methinks it's a little nuts for our writer to complain about Fr. LAME tearing down the Santa fantasy cherished by his 7- and 8-year old children. Give it up. Tell them it's a nice story but Santa isn't real. Tell them that the Santa story teaches us the importance of giving, of having fun, of sharing. But tell them there is NO Santa Claus.

At the same time, I can see why he finds that hard to do. He's still clinging to his own fantasy, which, while shed of the "old fat man with a white beard" trapping, yet carries the promises of heaven and hell (naughty or nice). That's why he goes to mass on Sundays. When he dies, he wants to go to the North Pole or Paradise or wherever his god/Santa lives to receive his heavenly/Christmas reward.

So, I'd suggest he stop beating on Father LAME and suggest to his kids they trade one fantasy for another. Like he did.


You can read the entire article here.