Santa is a God: Here’s Why

 

Image found here.

When you get into polytheism, you have to define for yourself what a God is. Western society is a lot more polytheistic than it believes itself to be. You have statism which is sort of a religion, in which the flag is a religious symbol, borders are considered holy, the constitution is a holy manuscript, and the “founding fathers” are ascended Gods; you also have the cult of money, in which people waste their lives away in the pursuit of imaginary numbers, sacrificing irreplaceable hours of their lives to a malevolent deity that does nothing more than uphold an unjust social hierarchy; our mainstream fiction spawns Gods, such as superheroes, who often reflect the values of western society, good and bad.  I feel like Neil Gaiman might have been onto something when he wrote “American Gods”, not that I think the book is completely true, mind you. A lot of the modern Gods are seemingly negative, but there’s one nice one, who has his time to shine around this time of year. Sorry to be the one to break the news to you but technically, Santa Claus is a God. Think about it. 

1. Children believe in him literally, and they leave offerings for him in the form of milk and cookies (his preferred offerings), 
2. He has several epithets such as Kris Kringle, Father Christmas, and others.
3. He has an entire mythology behind him, which differs depending on who’s telling the story. The elves are like demigods who aid him, the reindeer is his sacred animal. Maybe the ancient Egyptians would have depicted him with the head of a reindeer. 
4. He has hymns written and sung about him.
5. Mall Santas are like his priests, channeling him as he speaks through them to his loyal followers who sit on his representative’s lap. The followers present the priest a list of desires, like a written prayer. 
6. He has areas of specialty, called ‘domains’ when we’re talking about Gods, and could be said to represent winter, parental love, the ‘spirit of giving’; but when his image is corrupted, he can represent consumerism.

He may have his roots in Odin, and the historical St. Nicholas, but he has sprung off into his own entity, much the way Aphrodite can be traced back to Ishtar but spun-off into Her own entity. Now does this mean if we go to the North Pole we’re literally going to find a toy factory where he lives, and that he’s able to fly around the world in a flying sleigh pulled by flying reindeer, and deliver presents around the world in one night? Of course not, but you’re not going to look up in the sky and see Ra riding his Solar Barque across the sky either. And night is still caused by the side of the planet you’re on facing away from the star it orbits, not literally Ra going into the Amduat. For you see, that is Santa’s stumbling block into being considered a God; mythic literalism. 

Polytheists usually know that mythology isn’t to be taken literally, but symbolically; if the mythological events did happen somewhere, it was on another plane of existence, the Unseen World, aka Duat or the Astral Realm. In Set’s nightly battles with the Chaos Serpent for instance, one can find inspiration for their own battles against depression and self-doubt. It really doesn’t matter if the story literally took place, you’re supposed to learn a lesson from it. And mythic literalism is the main feature of Abrahamic monotheism, particularly Christianity. This has misled many people and obscured the true definition and functions of a God even outside the religion, and is the main reason most people become atheists after leaving Christianity, as they’ve been trained to think that all religion is mythic literalism; therefore they look at both people who think the Earth is only 6,000 years old and Noah’s flood really happened, and people who follow polytheism, as equally moronic. Good on these types of people for having the courage to leave the toxic belief system they were raised in behind, I’m an ex-Christian myself, but that doesn’t suddenly make them an expert on all world religions. It’s often said that the disillusionment in finding out that Santa Claus isn’t real is the first stepping stone toward atheism. But religion shouldn’t be looked at as “either real or not real, one religion is right and all the others are wrong”, nor as a suspension of disbelief, nor as a replacement for rational scientific thought. This is mainly a feature of Abrahamic monotheism, particularly in its more extreme forms. Before monotheism became widespread, people would look at another culture’s religion the same way you might look at their language. It’s just their way of looking at the world, and just because someone speaks a different language from you doesn’t make their language wrong. 

Santa Claus perhaps is only allowed to stick around because he is never referred to as a God, only rises to importance for a couple months out of the year, and followers are expected to abandon their “faith” in him after childhood. Yahweh certainly wouldn’t have tolerated him otherwise, although you get the sense he only begrudgingly allows Santa to stick around, seeing him as a distraction from his own hijacking of the winter solstice holidays (which is why the “keep the Christ in Chrtistmas” people don’t like him). Santa still has to work within the confines of Christianity and Capitalism, as do many other modern deities who might wear sainthood like a mask in order to still be allowed to interact with their followers. Unless Santa has been very corrupted over the years, perhaps this is not Santa’s ideal set of circumstances, but he cares too much about the children to give up. Maybe he wants that poor kid living in an apartment with the single parent to have the newest video game console, but the world just doesn’t work that way, and Gods aren’t omnipotent.

I never had that moment of feeling betrayed by Santa not being “real”, I figured out from a very young age that he wasn’t to be taken literally without anyone having to break the news to me, as it were. But all the same, I ended up turning my back in Santa for a long time, associating him with all the things I dislike about this time of year, such as organized religion and consumerism. But now that I see him as a God, I have a bit more sympathy for him. I’m not really going to venerate him, but I don’t think he’s malevolent. He does what he can for the children, he would like to do more but his hands are tied, and he can’t help it if his image gets hijacked by greedy corporations for advertisements.

Anyway, I’m still celebrating Moomas this year, where Anpu and Wepwawet are the ones delivering toys.