What's the Deal with Santa Claus?

What's the deal with Santa Claus? Is he an elf, is he a man, is he a myth? (That was my best Jerry Seinfeld impression. Please hold your applause...or rotten fruit...until the end of the post.)

Living in a house with a couple of smallish children, we have a lot of Santa Claus talk these days. My parents even sent a cute little message from Santa Claus to my son-a video of Santa talking to him...cute stuff!  Both my kids still believe in Santa Claus. My daughter (10) is crazy into Elf on a Shelf these days even. My son is learning about the whole thing. You ask him what Santa says and he says, "Santa Ho Ho Ho!" But then I think he's also a bit confused between Santa and God because he asked if he could talk to Santa in the sky the other day. He asked Santa for a Slinky Dog from Toy Story. We never actually took him to see Santa; he just asked him in the sky. Maybe this could work to our advantage-Lazy Parenting 101: teach your child they can talk to Santa like God and avoid the lines at the mall!

We also have been big into watching Christmas movies on TV this year. I like to watch the cheesy made-for-TV Christmas movies on channels like ABC Family and Lifetime. My husband watched part of one with me the other day and said, "What is this!?" I call it mind candy. But my son and I have been watching Polar Express a lot. We have the book and read it every year with my daughter. I had hoped to read it to my son this year but I can't find it! Anyway, the movie got me thinking.

There are three main kids in the movie. One is the main character, a little boy from a small town who is unsure about the existence of Santa. The other two are a little girl and a poor little boy, both of whom believe in Santa. The poor little boy is drawn in shabby clothes and says things like "Christmas just never works out for me." You get the idea that maybe he didn't get anything from Santa last year. He gets very excited when he discovers a neatly wrapped package for him from Santa.

I've been working with a group of people at my job lately trying to connect low income people in our community with people who can help them. We're not, for the most part, trying to be the help-just connect them with it. But in doing this, I've come much closer than I ever have before to poverty on a pretty wide scale. There are people in my community who will not have enough to eat tonight, who don't have a place to sleep tonight, and whose kids will not have gifts from them or Santa this weekend.

I don't write this to ask you to give them presents. If you do, great! But I wanted to write this blog post (I've been busy-sorry about the no posts for most of a year thing, assuming there are any readers to apologize to!) because my heart broke for those kids...and for the kids who will get something from Santa but don't realize other kids won't. All over the world, both kinds of kids exist. The kids who will have gleaming, new toys under the tree from Santa believe that every child in the world will also get a present from Santa. Maybe that's good: Santa is equal opportunity, no discrimination there. But it's also bad. They assume they will get gifts. They are not aware of the poverty and the hunger and the want of the children who will not get presents from Santa this weekend.

And what of those children? Will they think they're bad? Will think it is their fault the presents aren't there? That's what we tell them and the songs and TV shows tell them: you will get presents if you are nice and none if you are naughty. Is this what society also teaches? That if we are good and work hard, we will get rewards but if we are naughty and lazy, we will suffer. If we are in want and poor or hungry, it is because we did not work hard enough or didn't do something right.

I don't believe it. I don't like the thought of the child wondering what they did wrong to not receive presents from Santa and I do not believe that the only way to be poor is to be stupid, lazy, or bad. Does Santa just perpetuate this attitude?