I’d like to know what some other dad’s positions on the Santa Claus issue are.

I know kids tend to live in an imaginary world, but I really don’t want to validate that world that is supposed to be imaginary by pretending Santa Claus is real.

And there is NO way to connect Santa Claus with St Nicholas, as I’ve heard some parents suggest.  Santa Claus’ name may derive from that of St Nicholas, but that’s all the similarity there is.

I grew up believing Santa Claus was real; after all, my parents wouldn’t lie to me, would they?  Of course they did!

And, as a preemptive strike against Peter Ramus: STFU!!!

e got Santa from the New York Dutch. The original dressed as a Bishop and arrives in town on a steam boat with his flunky, a black dwarf with the un-PC name of Black Peter. The commercialization came later.

I heard that St. Nicholas punched out the heretic Arius on the floor of the Council of Nicea.  Is that true?

Ded Moroz.

<<I heard that St. Nicholas punched out the heretic Arius on the floor of the Council of Nicea.  Is that true?>>

He beat him with his crosier - that’s where Preston Brooks got his idea from!

@Andrew Capp,

I do tell my son that Santa Claus, who I tell him is the same as St. Nicholas , brings his gifts.  It has led to some funny exchanges like the time my son was looking at the package that one toy had come in and said “ is Santa Claus going to bring me the other toys that it shows on this box?” I like to think hat I am promoting the idea that there is a religious aspect to the gifts and that it mimics the gifts given to the baby Jesus.  At this age, 5 in my son’s case, a child is open to the idea of God and to promote the mystery of Santa Claus is a way for me to introduce God to him and hopefully strengthen his faith.  Over time of course the hope is that the Santa Claus thing will go by the wayside and God will remain.

I’d like to know what some other dad’s positions on the Santa Claus issue are.

I ignored the issue and played along and my kids figured it out by themselves because in our house we focused on Jesus and the Incarnation.

And speaking of the Incarnation, this is a good time (with Advent nigh) to post one of my favorite passages from Holy Writ…

Wisdom:

18:14. For while all things were in quiet silence, and the night was in the midst of her course,

Cum enim quietum silentium contineret omnia et nox in suo cursu medium iter haberet

18:15. Thy Almighty word leaped down from heaven from thy royal throne, as a fierce conqueror into the midst of the land of destruction,

Omnipotens sermo tuus de caelo a regalibus sedibus durus debellator in mediam exterminii terram prosilivit

Nicholas beat the heretic with his crozier.  I love it.  Would that more contemporary bishops would administer a belt from the crozier!

He is also the patron saint of Bari, Italy.  His bones were spirited awy form the Ottomans by some daring Barese sailors.

In 48 years I have never meet anyone who has suffered any harm of any kind for having believed in Santa Claus as a child.

My mother, who came from Czechoslovakia, told me that St. Nicholas rewarded good children and punished bad ones.  As a child, she once dreamed that she had been bad and that St. Nicholas punished her by pinching her big toe.  When she awoke, she discovered she had jammed her toe against the base board of the bed.  Merry Christmas, everyone!

The history:

1. Henry the Horny Tutor abolishes Catholicism in his realm, and thus abolish the cult of saints.

2. The Calvinist Puritans go to the extreme (or the logical consequence) and abolish all religious holidays, The Nativity of Christ included.

3. The Puritans, regrettably, shape Gringo religious practices. 

4. As a result of the Revolution of 1848, or its failure, lots of Middle Europeans immigrate into Gringoland, bringing the cultus of St. Nicholas with them, dressed as a bishop, with miter and red cope (red for martyr).  Both Lutherans and Catholics have this tradition, and (I think) even Swiss and Dutch Reformed (Calvinist). 

5.  As a utter and sheer anti-Catholic Know Nothing and Anglo-Saxon Nativist gesture, Yankeedom—ever Puritan—replaces the saint with a fat man in a fireman’s suit (when they weren’t going around putting up NINA signs).  I don’t know about Moore (poet of “Twas the night before Christmas"), but Thomas Nast, the first illustrator of The Fat One, was viciously anti-Catholic, enough to make “Peter Ramus” look like a blue eyed boy member of The Holy Name Society.

The rest is history.  Santa Claus is anti-Catholic.

Bring back the Middle European custom:  The kiddies tell The Bishop Saint their requests on 6 December.  He in turn tells the Christ Child, and then the Christ Child brings the gifts on the Day of the Nativitas Christi.  Better yet, follow the Southern European custom, and let the Magi bring the gifts 6 Jan, Epiphany.  And best of all, downplay this kitsch and carbohydrate holiday and put the emphasis back on Easter—exactly the emphasis that most Christians the world over have. By the way, according to the Liturgical Calendar, Pentecost Sunday (really a week) is a Solemnity equal to the Bah Humbug! holiday.  The Paschal Triduum surpasses both.

I kind of like the other saint who got sucked up into The Nativity of Christ: the cultus of St. Lucy (Lucia = Lux), martyr. a festival of lights.  Is it true that the Scandinavians do something on her day?

Meanwhile, it ain’t Christmas yet, whatever the hucksters over at the shopping male might say otherwise.  It’s Advent.

In old Bohemia, Saint Nicholas went door to door accompanied by an angle, and a devil, and the good children got candy, the bad children a bundle of sticks or a lump of coal.

My father remembers one year he got a bundle of sticks.....

The original morality lesson has been lost on the Coca Cola Santa…

In lieu of stuffing coal into the stocking of a badly-behaved urchin, I recommend stuffing Cundiff instead.  Q.V. “Albion’s Seed”, Appendix IV, Subsection 7:  “Cundiff Stuffing on Gringo Holidays.”

Okay, already. Enough with the personal attacks. Criticize Mr. Cundiff’s ideas, but cut out the puerile crap. And Sid--please stop labeling people “browns” unless and until you can show me their NSDAP card or some other evidence. As Rodney King once sniffled, “Can’t we all just GET ALONG?”

Oh come on, Sarto, that is the funniest thing that we have seen here in a while...We could use more like it!

I think someone asked about what one tells one’s children about Santa Claus, before the usual bickering commenced. In our house - one lawyer, one judge-we told our sons that yes, Sanat Claus exists, and with respect to delivering the gifts Mom and Dad are his agents.

I think this only slightly strecthes the truth, in that there must usually be an affirmative appointment of the agent by the principal, but here I would argue the appointment can be implied.

Puritan—replaces the saint with a fat man in a fireman’s suit

Coca-Cola introduced the red Santa suit long after the Puritans were gone, you Anglophobic nudnick.

The Puritans, regrettably, shape Gringo religious practices.

How many American today use Scottish metrical psalters, hear jeremiads from the pulpit and celebrate Communion seasons?

Santa Claus is anti-Catholic.

Now that’s paranoid.

The story about St. Nicolaus and Arius is, sadly, apocryphal.  If he punched anybody at Nicea, it would have been a follower of Arius, since Arius probably didn’t attend the council, since he wasn’t a bishop.  Eusebius of Nicomedia (not to be confused with Eusebius of Caesarea) was the chief spokesperson for the Arians at Nicea I.

HAPPY ADVENT EVERYBODY!!!

<<Coca-Cola introduced the red Santa suit long after the Puritans were gone...>>

WRONG!!!

You think Coca-Cola was the first to portray Santyclaus in red suit?

You’re even dumber than I thought!!!

Here’s something of the “internets” to refute you, if you need it:

http://www.snopes.com/cokelore/santa.asp

I shall oblige Mr. Sarto’s request.

You think Coca-Cola was the first to portray Santyclaus in red suit?

Sid Cundiff claimed the Puritans invented Santa.  Where does the article you cite support the thesis? And it was Coca-Cola that popularized the Red Santa suit, even if there was prior art.

Mr. Ramus misquotes me.  To clarify: The Puritan ethic of hatred toward the Catholic Church’s cult of saints—an ethic that survived long after the officially Established Puritan church—led to the secularization of the veneration of St. Nicholas, bishop and martyr.

The story about St. Nicolaus and Arius is, sadly, apocryphal.

<“You have no way of knowing that, Napoleon.”

I trust tradition on this. AFAIK, Msgr Hughes has it right,

+++++++++++ begin quotes ++++++++++

THE CHURCH IN CRISIS: A History of the General Councils: 325-1870

“But we are very far from possessing anything like a full history of this first Council of Nicaea. Of any official record of the day-today proceedings--the acta of the council--there is no trace. The earliest historians, from whose accounts our knowledge must derive, were in large measure partisan writers. And of the two writers who were present at the council, the one who was a historian[5] was an ally of the heretics and the quasi-official panegyrist of the emperor Constantine who called the council; and the other,[6] though he has much indeed to say about the council, does not anywhere profess to be writing a record of its acts.

5. Eusebius, bishop of Caesarea (?265-338).

6. St. Athanasius, bishop of Alexandria ( 328-73); born ?295.

+++++ end quotes +++++++++++++++++++

Besides, I LOVE the story.

Another St Nick page.

From elsewhere online and worth repeating: ‘Keep Christmas out of Advent’ and ‘I’m religious not spiritual’.

Blog.

St. Nicholas, was principally responsible for the partial destruction of the Temple of Artemis (one of the seven wonders of Antiquity) and also for laying down the foundations for Intolerance that destroyed many pagan monuments at his time and eventually to the persecution and barbaric killings of pagans themselves (see Hypatia).