We Americans talk about love an awful lot. Especially when you consider how seldom we actually get around to loving.
Of course, the thing we call love isn’t love at all. Not really. It’s too jealous, too petty, too mean. We can’t even call it the “love of self,” because it has nothing to do with our true selves: the imago Dei. Anyone who loves the image of God will learn to love God. No: we only love our glands and guts and tender bits—especially our egos, the tenderest bit of all. We’re the sum of our desires, our pleasures and pains.
This self-indulgence could hardly have less in common with true love: the self-sacrificial love of Christ on the Cross.
We’ve all been spoon-fed propaganda by this Cult of Self from the time we were born. What’s remarkable (and encouraging) is that most of us are still deeply ashamed of our selfishness. We walk the walk, but we can’t bring ourselves to talk the talk.
To this day, most couples will justify getting a divorce by saying, “We can’t raise our son in this loveless marriage any longer. It’s not fair to him.” Of course, ninety-nine times out of a hundred, children would vastly prefer their parents stay together. Timmy doesn’t need Mom and Dad to be swept up in a passionate romance. He’d just like them to be civil. But Mom and Dad want passionate romances—if not with each other, than with parties unknown.
They know they’re not acting in the best interests of their son. They know they’re doing a selfish thing. And they know their selfishness has the blessing of our legal system. They know every Hollywood movie, every pop song, every bestselling novel fully supports their right to abandon their spouse, ditch their kid, and “live their best lives.” Yet they still feel the need to pretend like they’re martyring their marriage for the sake of their family.
You know as well as I do—as well as they do—that their motives aren’t selfless. But they won’t admit it. Not even to themselves. And that’s cause for hope. After all, they’re only liars. They’re not ignorant of the truth: they just ignore it.
For how long, though?
It’s really no surprise that our culture is embracing witchcraft and Satanism. Once everyone is “living the lie,” there won’t be any need to lie. We’ll come right out and say, “I don’t care about anyone else. I don’t care about my wife, my children, my parents, my friends, or my neighbors. I don’t care about God. I care about me, and that’s it.” Why not? What do we have to be ashamed of? Everyone’s doing it.
Still, there’s more than enough reason for hope. And one of those reasons is a big fat man in a big red coat.
Santa Claus isn’t much of a hit with Christians anymore. The Puritans among us have always accused him of upstaging Jesus on His birthday. Santa is a symbol of consumerism, of our idolatrous worship of the Almighty Dollar, etc. And, as always, the Puritans are more right than wrong.
Yet over the last couple of years we discovered that the alternative to Santa probably isn’t a sober, prayerful observation of the Feast of the Nativity of Our Lord. More and more young people are keeping the consumerism; they’re just dumping the Jesus stuff and all it represents—innocence, family, joy, and peace.
They’ve decided they don’t need the stress of getting together with the various relatives to whom Nature has shackled them so cruelly and arbitrarily. No: Christmas is about presents, and the best present of all is the one we give ourselves. It’s the gift of “self-care.”
So don’t worry about choking down Mom’s salmon loaf. Don’t bother spending money on another bottle of scotch for your brother. Don’t put yourself through another round of Uncle Herb’s theories about where President Obama was really born. Just treat yourself to some bubbly, climb in bed, and spend Christmas binging on the new season of Riverdale.
The only thing now standing between us and the abolition of Christmas is Santa Claus. Though his origins may be dubious (“Can there any good thing come out of the North Pole?”), Santa is a true imitator of Christ. His is a life of tireless, joyful self-sacrifice. He works 364 days a year making toys; then, on the night before Christmas, he delivers them to every child on the planet.
And what does he ask in return? He’s too modest even to eat all of the cookies and drink all of the milk we set out for him. That’s spiritual poverty.
Like Christ, Santa asks nothing of us that he isn’t willing to do himself. You think scotch is expensive? Imagine giving away twenty million Barbie Dream Houses every year. You think Uncle Herb is bad? Imagine having to listen to three billion children explain why they deserve to be on the Nice List—including your own brood. And you think salmon loaf is nasty? Imagine having to eat all the cookies they leave out in Australia. (Ever had an Anzac biscuit? Dr. Hermie must make a fortune replacing Santa’s fillings every year.)
In that sense, it doesn’t matter if Santa owes more to the Catholic Church or the Coca-Cola Company. He’s “one of us.”
Consumerism probably isn’t going away anytime soon, and Santa may be partly to blame. But in the last few years he’s become a counter-cultural figure. He performs the most scandalous, disquieting, revolutionary act of all: an act of kindness. And for total strangers!
Santa’s a big, fat rebuke to the Cult of Self. He’s the fancy, the poetry, the romance, that can push aside that curtain and view the supernal beauty and glory beyond. Santa abides in love and, “he who abides in love abides in God, and God abides in him.”
Maybe Solzhenitsyn was right. Maybe the world may have forgotten God. But it hasn’t forgotten Santa Claus, and that’s reason enough for hope.
Did you enjoy this post? Then please consider buying a copy of my new book The Reactionary Mind. Peace and the Good!