Santa Claus: Fantasy, Folklore, Deity, or All the Above?
It’s that time of the year. But it does feel different this time around… and not because of the pandemic, either.
I think it took me awhile to figure out, but honestly, I don’t really think I’m a super-big Christmas person. I was several years into my adulthood before I figured that out, but at some point, I had the epiphany, “I don’t really think I’m into all this.” In general, Thanksgiving as a holiday is much more my speed. That might be why the Christmas celebrations I did enjoy a bit more in the last 10 years probably looked more like a Thanksgiving celebration. But if I’m honest with you, I just don’t think I’m into it like that.
Now, I realize this probably deserves some explanation, so I’ll do that very, very briefly. I’ll outline in no particular order.
FIRST… GIFTS. ARE NOT. MY LOVE LANGUAGE. I don’t particularly like getting gifts, and I don’t particularly enjoy giving gifts, either. In general, I tend to like experiences more than I like things (again, that probably has a lot to do with why a Thanksgiving feast resonates much more)… I would much rather prefer to do coffee, breakfast, or dinner with you than getting a gift from you. Gifts are just kind of weird to me. I don’t mind small tokens. But anything outside of that can make me a bit uncomfortable.
SECOND, MANY, MANY CHRISTMAS GIFTS ARE FOR THINGS THAT PEOPLE WILL NEVER USE. Truthfully, there are ways around this. I know people who do Christmas wish list and stuff like that, so that’s certainly one way to mitigate this possibility. But still, that seems a bit weird to me. If you’re going to give me a list of things I can get you, then it feels more like a subtle form of manipulation… like a roundabout attempt to control the outcome. I think registries make sense for large, momentous occasions, like birthdays, showers, anniversaries, weddings, etc. But for Christmas? Meh… alternatively, without a registry, I’ve received many, many gifts that I have absolutely ZERO intention of using, and I’m CERTAIN I’ve inadvertently given those gifts, too.
THIRD, I work A LOT. To me, there’s absolutely nothing that sounds peaceful or restful about spending the last 45 days of the year franticly looking for gifts for people I love, when I could be spending that time with them instead (maybe I feel that way because I have a big family). Now, true, I know these aren’t mutually exclusive: most people can, and do, do both (ha, I said doo doo). But I think for a lot of people, it divides their attention. On the one hand, you’re excited to see family and friends coming in from out of town, and on the other hand, you’re a bit anxious about all the shopping. Why on Earth would I sign myself up to do that, especially year after year?
Nah, I’m good on that.
FOUR, Christmas can create indebtedness (I’ll expound on this point shortly). Maybe I’m a bit strange, but I really, really dislike feeling like I inconvenience people. I think that’s one of the reasons why receiving gifts can be a bit hard for me because I feel like someone went out of their way to do something big for me. But I also think that serves to illustrate my point. If someone gets you something for Christmas, and you didn’t get them anything, it’s easy to feel guilty. Or if you got them something quite small and they got you something quite elaborate or nice, again it’s easy to feel kind of bad. Or maybe it’s been a tough year for you financially, and a lot of your friends/family get you something, and you literally have no money to get them anything, you likely have mixed feelings about the whole ordeal.
FIVE, Christmas can exacerbate social comparisons. This is likely to be truer for kids (i.e. “Jimmy’s parents got him the PS5, why didn’t you get me one?”), but let’s be honest: adults can be really bad about social comparisons, too. You may feel differently about your gift depending on what your friends’ boyfriend/husband got her, or what your friend’s girlfriend/wife got him… or what your ex girlfriend/boyfriend got you in the past. Or what your uncle got you last year or what your brother got you the year before or maybe what they gave your older or younger sibling this year.
It’s just messy, man. And this isn’t even an exhaustive list. I told you I was going to be brief.
But in general, I think of all the issues I [briefly] described above as relatively minor concerns. I have two much bigger concerns, which I describe in slightly more detail below.
BIGGER ISSUE ONE, most of the world lives in crippling poverty. With almost 8 billion people in the world, by almost any measure, that’s a resounding fact. Americans spend about $800+ on Christmas gifts every year (in fact, we spend so much on gifts, most Americans have holiday debt for a few months). From an economics perspective, it’s strange for a lot of different reasons. The wealth redistribution equates, more or less, to rich people giving things to other rich people, as an expression of goodwill and generosity. Now, most Americans would vehemently disagree that they’re rich, but the median household income for the entire world is $10,000 (note, that’s for an entire HOUSEHOLD).
I’ll stand by my point: rich people being generous to other rich people.
Now, I want to be clear, generosity is a WONDERFUL thing, and I applaud you for your interest in doing that… but let’s be honest, most of us wrestle with being generous to poor people, so are we really showing our heart for generosity if that primarily manifests in being generous to other rich people? I can’t help but feel a better demonstration would be generosity to strangers and/or the poor.
BIGGER ISSUE TWO, we’ve spiritualized Christmas in very messy and unusual ways. Again, I wish I had time to describe more, but believe it or not, I haven’t even gotten to what I actually want to talk about yet… but the Christmas holiday just seems really messy and busy. So, really, I don’t want to sign myself up to be a part of all that.
Now, two clarifying points.
For starters, I want to be clear: I’m not anti-Christmas. A second time for emphasis: I’M NOT ANTI-CHRISTMAS. I’m just somewhat neutral to it. I have ZERO qualms or issues with people who celebrate (or don’t), I just don’t know if it’s something that I’m super into. You’ll also probably notice that 95% of what I said has to do with the gift giving… outside of that, I really don’t have major qualms with Christmas. But understandably, that big emphasis on gift giving, plus my interest in experiences (vs. gifts) makes Thanksgiving much more my speed.
My other clarifying point: As a Christian, I’m pretty enthused about celebrating the birth of Christ, but that doesn’t mean I have to celebrate Christmas. That’s like me telling someone that they’re not thankful unless they celebrate Thanksgiving. There are lots of celebrations around the world to promote gratitude and thankfulness, and most of the world’s 8 billion people do NOT celebrate Thanksgiving. So, to extrapolate that someone isn’t thankful because they choose not to celebrate the holiday that you do to practice thankfulness is pretty egocentric.
God is dope. Kind of neutral about Christmas.
But for what it’s worth, I’ve been pretty thoughtful about the holiday over the last couple of years. I think that’s especially true given I’m Nigerian American, I travel quite a bit, and I’m now actively doing research… so, I’m always puzzling over something and trying to understand it in different ways.
For instance, you’ll recall in a previous post that I took a sociocultural approach to looking at global icons, like Jesus of Nazareth and Santa Claus. It’s December, so it’s only fitting that I pick up where I left off with Santa.
Santa Claus is a global figure around the world. But how do we make sense of Santa? How can we explain or think about him, beyond simply the Christmas holiday? And what is Santa exactly?
Is Santa Fantasy?
Folklore?
Deity?
All the Above?
Maybe something else…
We’ll need to know at least the basics about Santa in order to make sense of who or what he is. Santa Claus is based on a real person… a saint, in fact. This gentleman, [Saint] Nicholas, was born around 300 AD in Eurasia (Turkey specifically). Nicholas was a stand-up guy, with a huge heart for kids and an ongoing interest in serving the poor and needy. He was so noble and impactful, that his acts of generosity became the source of legend, even long after he died. That’s really how it all started.
Approximately 2,000 years later, the stories have transformed quite a bit, in mostly harmless and amusing ways. A magic sleigh here… a few reindeer there… sprinkle in some elves and add a pinch of magic. It’s quite remarkable.
But maybe that’s the point.
One thing that frequently happens to us as we get older is we can become less imaginative. It’s true. Say what you will about children, but they are phenomenally imaginative. Adults, on the other hand, are bogged down with what we believe to be “realistic”.
An example may help.
I had a family friend growing up, and their son, a curious Nigerian boy, was absolutely brilliant (in fact, he works on Wall Street now). At 7, he wrote an essay about how he would attend Harvard Law and subsequently serve as President of the United States. Either would be an impressive feat, and doing both would be remarkable. Beyond the fact that Harvard is one of the most selective and esteemed institutions for higher education in the world, admission to Harvard Law is exceptionally competitive. Add on $70K in tuition per year, plus another $30K in living expenses annualy, and you’re looking at $300K in expenses, for a school with at 16% acceptance rate and nearly 8,000 applicants annually.
And that’s just the Law School part… becoming President is probably far harder, even if he wasn’t a West African immigrant.
But that didn’t stop my young friend. He was only 7 after all. He didn’t understand any of the things described above. But if I approached him today, I’m sure he could enumerate dozens of potential challenges for him to graduate from Harvard Law and serve as President of the US.
Coincidence? Probably not.
My point is this. There’s something about the imagination and innocence of children that we as adults find absolutely mesmerizing. So, this whole Santa thing… one argument is that the story of Santa is about creating an elaborate fantasy to appeal to the unique, intrinsic qualities of children.
To be imaginative.
And nonsensical.
And creative.
And to hope.
And dream.
Think about it: people have their entire lives to be “pragmatic”, and “realistic”, and “practical”, etc. In the story of Santa, maybe it’s really about creating this fantasy, so we can nurture that imagination in young boys and girls.
So, we make up utterly ridiculous stories about a chubby old white dude that rides a magic sleigh around the world, in less than 24 hours, to deliver gifts to children in 190+ different nations, commensurate with their nice or naughty behavior. And to aid him in his efforts, he has an entire subspecies of mythical creatures, Elves and reindeer. And we have movies, songs, and books to learn about them all.
Interesting fantasy, huh?
In case you’re wondering, this argument isn’t farfetched. Creativity has been given a great deal of attention across the social sciences, both among children and adults. There’s some research conducted by organizational sociologists where they study people who work at advertising firms, to get a better understanding of the creative process. One of the findings from that work is that the creatives in the firm were treated like children. In fact, the managers in the advertising firm said this was deliberate… an overt attempt to get the MOST CREATIVE ideas out of them, by encouraging a culture of childlike socialization where they weren’t weighed down by the expectation to be realistic.
So, the creatives at the firm were treated like kids, and they acted like it, too… all in hopes they would be more creative and imaginative.
All this to say, maybe the fantasy about Santa is part of our intention to promote that creativity, imagination, and open-ended thinking in children… who knows, maybe it gives us an opportunity to flex some creative muscles that we don’t get to use on a regular basis (that’s a whole different conversation). Maybe seeing their hope makes us hopeful, too.
But what about Santa Claus as folklore? Maybe that’s a better description of what he is. That’s not over the top. A cultural psychologist or sociologist would go a step beyond saying Santa is an elaborate, popular fantasy. Instead, they would say that Santa is a means of transmitting and reproducing culture from generation to generation… folklore. I mean, after all, Saint Nicholas lived around 300 AD, and his stories have long survived, and even evolved, since then.
But it’s bigger than that.
Contrary to popular belief, humans are fundamentally social: we do not live, or thrive, in isolation. In fact, extended periods of time in isolation impairs development in children. So contrary to the notion of the ‘lone wolf’, that simply is not how humans work. There’s obviously a continuum of introversion to extroversion, but make no mistake about it: extended social isolation is detrimental to physical, mental, psychological, and emotional health. We live in packs: family, friends, towns, communities, cities, suburbs, etc.
Humans NEED each other. So, peaceful coexistence and cooperation is a much.
If we’re going to maintain cooperation, coexistence, and peaceful cohabitation as signature features of human existence, we’ll need to seamlessly integrate these into culture. The good news is, this is relatively easy to do.
Think about things like the Golden Rule: a simple principle, across countries, groups, and religions (Christianity and otherwise), to treat people with dignity and respect, as you yourself desire to be treated.
Also think about the Good Samaritan. While it’s a popular parable in Christian circles, more broadly, it’s become a principle to encourage goodwill, humanitarianism, and generosity to your fellow man… perhaps even those that you may otherwise have reservations about helping (The Bible actually tells us Jews and Samaritans had no dealings together, which makes the parable more powerful).
Santa Claus builds on these principles in important ways, in the form of folklore: beliefs, stories, and tales told within a particular community of individuals.
While Saint Nick was, indeed, a real person, his generosity has been transformed to a legendary level. Now, he’s a larger-than-life figure, traveling around the world on a magic sleigh, working tirelessly to provide gifts for well-behaved children around the world.
Prosociality.
Benevolence.
Generosity.
Interest in the welfare of children.
In Claus, we see important values being promoted. In that sense, whether the stories are true or not (or even plausible, for that matter) is somewhat irrelevant. Instead, the stories serve as a means of illustrating principles.
From what I can tell, it seems successful, at least in some ways. Millions (if not billions) of children all around the world are on their best behavior, to stay off of Santa’s “naughty” list. Moreover, some children may even go as far as being kind to others, which is a step beyond simply being well behaved for the sake of their parents.
In that sense, folklore has done exactly what it was supposed to do. Using captivating stories and culturally enriched tales, it has promoted values that are of great importance to all of mankind.
Generosity will always be a desirable principle to promote in humanity.
But what about Santa Claus as deity? Does this definition fit? Think about it. Santa provides you nice things if you’re well behaved. He knows if every child in the world is naughty or nice. He has powers, and he has mythical beings that work to advance his goals. And people (mostly kids) go to great lengths to ensure that Santa believes that they’ve followed certain guidelines for desirable behavior.
If we were looking at this outside of the context of a holiday, most people would say, sure, Santa Clause meets the definition of what we usually think about when we think of a god.
And sure, we can rationalize it away as much as we’d like, but ultimately, the idea (again) isn’t farfetched.
I mean, after all, in the Christian religion we usually talk about the worship of all kinds of things.
Money.
Sex.
Food.
Work.
Alcohol.
Social media.
More recently, we’ve been getting a little bit edgier, talking about the worship of nationalism, government, political parties, and even specific political leaders.
People can literally worship anyone or anything (we see that throughout the Bible, from cover to cover).
To me, it’s hardly controversial to say Santa Claus is a deity. If anything, I think it’s more controversial to try and argue he isn’t. That’s effectively saying, “All this other stuff in the world been tainted by idolatry, but Santa Claus (and Christmas) is the one thing that we managed to get perfect. No sir! No worship of Santa in any way, shape, or form over here!”
Now, let’s stop and pause for a second… because by this point, I’m sure somebody, somewhere is starting to get at least a little bit upset with me.
THIS WAS WRITTEN TO BE EDGEY AND THOUGHT PROVOKING.
I don’t have any major qualms with Santa, and I don’t mean to imply in any way, shape, or form that your Santa Christmas sweater means you worship an old, chubby White dude from 3rd century Eastern Europe.
I don’t have any beef with Santa hats.
I don’t have any issues with elves, or reindeer, or Christmas music, or any of that stuff.
THIS WAS WRITTEN TO BE THOUGHT PROVOKING. If it isn’t, I failed miserably or you aren’t thinking (or both).
I’m not finished though.
I talk elsewhere about the significance of Santa Claus being White. I’ll revisit that conversation here. Research shows we have mental schemas concerning what people in specific roles are supposed to look like. In other words, I have an image in my head of what an accountant should look like… what an engineer should look like… and what a football player should look like. And those are three different images for three different kinds of people. What’s really cool about these mental schemas is that more recently, researchers have applied the theory to study religion.
The findings are startling, although it’s confirmed what many of us have since believed. But now we have research to support it.
Most American Christians visualize God as a White man… and even though we’re all made in His image, American Christians think of Him as more White than He is Black (at least implicitly)… what’s crazy about this though is not only did this finding emerge among adults, but it also emerged among children, as young as SEVEN YEARS OLD.
American children think God is more White than Black.
Now, to be fair, this is to be expected, based on all the images we see of Jesus with very fair complexion skin. But I think there’s another piece of this, too.
We tend to implicitly associate good things with “White” and bad things with “Black”. That pattern has been demonstrated quite a few times in the social sciences. So, if you’re a child and you’re hearing this story of Santa for the first time… and you hear he’s this larger-than-life figure who’s generous, hardworking, and provides for children around the world… why wouldn’t he be White?
There’s an implicit association in our brain wherein good (bad) things in the world come from White (Black) people, right? Sooooo, of course Santa would be White.
In that sense, Santa shares certain similarities with Jesus: even though Santa is a deity, he, previously, took on a human form… and because we ascribe more positive traits to White (vs. non-White) people, it makes perfect sense that we have a White Santa.
And what do we get from this Santa?
Gifts. Prosperity. Good times and cheer. Well-behaved children. The list goes on.
I’m running tight on space, so let me bring it in.
The point is this: Santa Claus fits the definition of all of these things.
He’s a source of fantasy, to appeal to the imagination of children.
He’s also folklore, integrated into holiday stories to promote desirable human qualities like generosity and humanitarianism.
He’s a deity. Children lift up their prayers for gifts. They take a pilgrimage to the shopping mall to see him every year. They modify and shift their lifestyles and behaviors in hopes of rewards. He’s an all-seeing figure that knows what every child around the world has done and acts to recompense each Christmas season.
He fits the definition of all the above.
Just some more random thoughts. Happy holiday!
Nnamdi