Jesus Claus

December 2002

“While I was in Japan soon before Christmas, I became friends with a couple of Japanese. One night we got to talking about Christmas. I tried to explain it to them, describing the presents, Santa Claus, parties, family time, and some of the religious aspects. They found this very interesting,” the speaker at our departmental meeting said.

“The next time I saw them, being the wonderful Japanese people that they are, they presented me with the strangest Christmas present I’ve ever seen. I couldn’t laugh or reveal my shock, because that would insult them. So I just accepted it and thanked them. It was a Santa Claus nailed to a cross.”

The room exploded with horrified laughter. Indeed, it was one of the funniest things I had heard in a long time. More than a few wiped away tears before the chuckles finally died down.

Later, when I retold this story to my fiancee and her roommate, I realized something. Is it really that big of a stretch for an outsider to confuse Jesus and Santa?

In the weeks leading up to Christmas, young American children are usually most excited about the presents that their families and Santa are going to bring them. We take our children to the mall to take their pictures with Santa and let them read him their lists of what they want. There Santa asks them whether they’ve been good this year, as if they needed to earn the presents that their parents were buying for them when they were really a free gift. When we talk to children, what do we ask them? “What do you want for Christmas this year, Kelly?” “What did Santa bring you this year?” Children spend Christmas Eve either opening presents or setting out milk and cookies for someone who will never come, and Christmas day playing with their presents and comparing them with their friends’.

And then there’s the dilemma of what parents should tell their children about Santa. Some tell their kids that Santa is real, and fill their heads with magical stories about Santa’s love and generosity. Then a dark day comes when, through a friend, an older sibling, or their own curiosity, they realize that Mom and Dad have been lying to them their entire lives. Other parents, like mine, tell their kids that Santa isn’t real, that he’s just something we play along with for fun every year. But some children still believe in Santa, they say, so we shouldn’t spoil their fun by telling them the truth. So they grow up half-believing in this mythical figure who everyone else seems to believe in, a jolly old fat man who lives in a perpetual haze between imagination and reality.

Somewhere in this mix is the official center and namesake of this holiday, the Christ child. For some, despite its religious origins, Christmas is a purely secular holiday intended solely for time with friends and family, fun, and the exchange of gifts. For Christians, Christmas is usually all of these things, plus the celebration of our Savior’s birth. We sing songs about Jesus, we emulate the wise men by giving gifts to others as a show of our love, and perhaps we even set up nativity scenes in our homes. On the night before Christmas, perhaps we go to the Christmas Eve service at church to celebrate His coming before we go home to get the kids ready for Santa and in bed as soon as possible, because “Santa doesn’t come while the children are awake.”

I’m glad my parents told me the truth about Santa, but for a while I still sort of believed in him. My mom said she told us the truth because if I found out she’d lied about Santa, she thought I might think she’d lied about God as well, that maybe He was imaginary, too. A friend of mine went through a difficult period of doubt as a child for that very reason. Her parents taught her to believe in two people whom she could not see for herself: Santa and Jesus. When she found out that one of them was a dream, she didn’t see much reason to go on believing in the other.

So I have a simple question that’s taken me 24 years to ask: why do we allow Santa into our homes at all?

The crucified Santa is a perfect representation of what Christmas in America has become. It has a religious foundation, but the wrong person as the center. Santa is a distant judge who gives children gifts according to what they do. If you’re good, Santa brings you what you want. If you’re bad, he brings you a lump of coal. Children and parents both always seem to forget that even in our best year, we’re still not completely good all the time.

In contrast, Jesus is an ever-present friend who gives Himself to each of us unconditionally out of his love for us. He knows that none of us is completely good, but he died for us anyway. He lives in our hearts rather than at the North Pole. If we want to talk to Him, we pray instead of sending a letter or sitting on a stranger’s lap at the mall. And he gives us not just toys, but life itself.

If Santa and presents are the focus of Christmas, then we should make them our focus each holiday season. But if Christ is the focus, then including Santa in the festivities muddies the water and confuses both our children and us.

I’ve heard people argue that Santa is just something fun that they do because the children enjoy it, and it doesn’t hurt anything. It’s true that Santa is fun. I remember sneaking out to the living room before dawn to see what Santa had brought me. But having Santa as the focus makes Christ an afterthought. I’m sure few Christian parents consciously make that choice, but every year that’s the choice that millions of them make.

Until Santa becomes God and dies for me out of his love rather than because of my good works, he doesn’t have the right to be pictured on a cross like he was on the present from the Japanese. And until he has that right, does he belong in our homes at Christmastime?

My wife calls Santa the “big red burglar.” When she was a child, it scared her to think that a stranger was coming into her house uninvited through the chimney. Although American tradition holds a more positive view of Santa, perhaps this description isn’t so far off. The big red burglar has broken into our homes and stolen the spotlight of a beautiful celebration. Will we lie in bed and let him come in like a thief in the night, or will we bar the entrances and send him away? The choice is up to us.