Vol 2 Issue 14

Ho, ho, ho, and a merry Jesus kiss-ass day, it's the jolly Atheist Rat here hoping to disparage you from the mass of lies and deceit that has been forced upon you and your unsuspecting children for years. Don't get me wrong, I enjoyed opening presents and stuff when I was a child, but I could have done without all the Santa hocus pocus. You don't have to mislead children with made up fairy tales; no one ever tells kids that mother goose is real and that story is enjoyed despite its openly fictional nature.

Even Atheists celebrate a water downed version of Xmas called Winter Solstice which is basically what ancient cultures actually were partying about with Yule trees and such. The history of St. Nicholas is a tale of multiple cultures that has slowly changed through the landscape of time and created a weird holiday all of its own. To some extent Christmas has become a Santa's day, as more and more 'unchurched' Americans celebrate with over-the-top decorations while leaveing out all the Jesus mania. Religious fanatics will disagree but as far as mainstream America goes, Jesus and his henchmen tend to offend other cultures more than they appease.

Several cities of diverse people have dropped Santa as well from their Christmas tree lightings, as secular appeasement is more cheerful to some today. This has caused our dominant Christian society to slowly take the back seat so all the people of America can live fairly peacefully. On the other side of the coin, many Jews, Hindu's etc… continue to partake in similar Christmas celebrations (hard not to with all the nutty decor).

So, back to Santa...

Sometime in the 4th century there lived a man who was sainted by the Roman Catholic church and was dubbed St. Nicholas. The real story is that this was more than likely not his name since it's traditional for a church leader to take another name, like Pope John, a.k.a Carlos. Regardless of who became a Saint in those days, fanatical early Christians were known to make up all sorts of crazy myths to perpetuate their cause. For example St. Nick was known to have done the following: deliver a bag of gold to a poor family by tossing it through a window, become imprisoned during the persecutions of Emperor Diocletian, attend the first Council of Nicaea, and so on. In reality, Nicholas is the patron saint of children, scholars, virgins, sailors, merchants. In the Middle Ages he was also regarded by thieves as their patron saint.

To understand the madness that goes on with saint worship in the Roman Catholic church, we have to go back in time to the crazy days and talk about 'holy bones'. Once upon a time the church realized that their followers 'loved' Saints, so in an attempt to obtain more wealth the Church began sainting everyone. At one time, the Church claimed to have the staff of Moses and Aaron, the cross Jesus died on, the nails…well, I'm sure you get the picture; if it was talked about in the Bible they said they possessed it.

Of course, none of this stuff exists today because the Roman Church claims greed brought about stealing and grave robbing and that caused them to stop the practice of sainting. This basically caused many generations in different regions to slowly incorporate the veneration of St. Nick into their worship secessions. This practice spread quickly because of new trade routes and volia! You give someone a gift and if you're lucky old St. Nick would supposedly bring you good fortune in return.

The Christian figure of Saint Nicholas replaced or incorporated various pagan gift-givers like Roman Befana and the Germanic Berchta and Knecht Ruprecht. He was called Sankt Nikolaus in Germany and Sanct Herr Nicholaas or Sinter Klaas in Holland. In these countries Nicholas was sometimes said to ride through the sky on a horse. He was depicted as wearing a bishop's robe and was said to be accompanied at times by Black Peter (an African slave) who dressed like an elf and was believed to whip the naughty children; later on he was believed to leave lumps of coal to children who were bad.

The American version of the Santa Claus figure recieved its inspiration and its name from the Dutch legend of Sinter Klaas, brought by settlers to New York in the 17th century. As early as 1773 the name appeared in the American press as "St. A Claus," but it was the popular author Washington Irving who gave Americans their first detailed information about the Dutch version of Saint Nicholas.

In his History of New York, published in 1809 under the pen-name Diedrich Knickerbocker, Irving described the arrival of the saint on horseback (unaccompanied by Black Peter, of course) each Eve of Saint Nicholas. This Dutch-American St. Nick achieved his fully Americanized form in 1823 through the poem, A Visit From Saint Nicholas--more commonly known as The Night Before Christmas, by writer Clement Moore.

Then along came illustrator Thomas Nash, who depicted a rotund Santa for the Christmas issues of Harper's magazine from the 1860s to the 1880s. Nash also created Santa's workshop at the North Pole and Santa's list of the good and bad children of the world (minus the beatings). A human-sized version of Santa Claus, rather than the elf of Moore's poem, was depicted in a series of illustrations for Coca-Cola advertisements introduced in 1931. In modern versions of the Santa Claus legend, only his toy-shop workers are elves. Rudolph, the ninth reindeer, with a red and shiny nose, was invented in 1939 by an advertising writer for the Montgomery Ward Company.

Without a doubt, old Santa has come along way, slowly evolving from a hermit monk to a colorful fat white man who gives imaginary gifts from the arctic ocean. I enjoy giving gifts too and in a little way it does seem to create happeness in our dreary lives, but by all means it doesn't justify lying to children.

I'll never forgot my own revelation of the non-existent Santa when I became aware of parents wrapping presents. So go out and spread a little cash around, just keep in mind that Montgomery Ward didn't hire a writer to create Rudolph for the hell of it; that was pure capitalism at work.