I don’t think I have ever read a more scathing attack on Santa Claus. Here is a taste:
In 1897, 8-year-old Virginia O’Hanlon wrote to The New York Sun inquiring if Santa Claus were real. In what would become one of the world’s most famous editorials, the Sun lied to her. Here, in part, is what the editorial said:
“Yes, VIRGINIA, there is a Santa Claus. He exists as certainly as love and generosity and devotion exist, and you know that they abound and give to your life its highest beauty and joy. Alas! how dreary would be the world if there were no Santa Claus. It would be as dreary as if there were no VIRGINIAS. There would be no childlike faith then, no poetry, no romance to make tolerable this existence. We should have no enjoyment, except in sense and sight. The eternal light with which childhood fills the world would be extinguished.
Not believe in Santa Claus! You might as well not believe in fairies!”
What a disservice to humanity—not to mention to the child who asked for the truth. And to what end? To preserve raw, cheap sentimentality. A world without Santa would be no more dreary than the world is with him right now. Nor would his absence harm childlike faith, poetry, or romance. On the contrary, if Santa Claus and his coterie of reindeer and elves were suddenly to go poof, the holiday season—a happy time for the already happy, but frequently a miserable time for those who are less than happy—would offer people of all faiths, or no faith at all, a much better shot at finding a bit of love, generosity, devotion, beauty, and joy than they can ever find while Santa lives.
Born centuries ago, from the union of paganism and Christianity, today’s Santa is fully backed by an adult conspiracy that ranges from parents and teachers to NORAD (the North American Aerospace Defense Command, which has been “tracking” Santa’s movements since 1955). Santa is about terror, not love (anybody else ever had to hold a screaming child who’s refusing to sit on the lap of the man in the red suit?), and he’s about greed, not generosity. If it weren’t for the blustering blinders imposed by “tradition,” we’d have come to our senses and gotten rid of him a long time ago.
And Fendrich does not stop there. Read the rest…
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