Santa vs. God – The Final Round

By Agata Mazurek

Have you ever won­dered, between dec­o­rat­ing your Christ­mas tree and look­ing for presents, what for God’s sake you’re doing? The­o­ret­i­cal­ly, you’re sup­posed to be prepar­ing for Jesus’s birth­day, but do you actu­al­ly do it? Maybe you’re not even a Chris­t­ian. 

I don’t know why, but I have this strong feel­ing that most Chris­tians have for­got­ten ‘the rea­son for the sea­son’. Of course, we still cel­e­brate the birth of Christ, maybe even loud­er than before. Def­i­nite­ly ear­li­er than before. Shop own­ers so much love to cel­e­brate Jesus’s birth­day that they start their mar­ket­ing cam­paigns and pro­mote Christ­mas prod­ucts at the begin­ning of Sep­tem­ber already. I think God would be proud. There are, how­ev­er, more incon­sis­ten­cies.  

Let’s move on to anoth­er tra­di­tion – Advent. I’m won­der­ing if these peo­ple who for over 3 weeks open the lit­tle doors on their Advent cal­en­dars filled with choco­lates, cos­met­ics, or oth­er items, com­pre­hend the actu­al mean­ing of Christ­mas. I thought Chris­tians are sup­posed to pre­pare for Jesus’s birth­day, but to be hon­est, I have no idea what role a rein­deer-shaped choco­late could pos­si­bly play in those prepa­ra­tions. 

Then comes anoth­er sur­prise. Since we’re talk­ing about somebody’s birth­day, we can’t for­get about presents. For our­selves, of course. Many peo­ple prob­a­bly remem­ber Saint Nicholas, the bish­op who gave his mon­ey to the poor. But how did we come from giv­ing away our sav­ings to peo­ple in need to get­ting the newest PlaySta­tion for our­selves? But stop. Hold on. What if I’m wrong? What if I’m just a bit too cyn­i­cal? What if it’s ok that peo­ple can’t wait to spend their last mon­ey for gifts nobody wants? I do feel a bit guilty for judg­ing this sit­u­a­tion through my ‘anti-Christ­mas’ glass­es. To me, how­ev­er, God is still more mean­ing­ful dur­ing Christ­mas time than San­ta. 

And on a side note: Just after writ­ing these sen­tences, I stum­bled upon the fol­low­ing head­line: “Ital­ian church apol­o­gizes after bish­op tells chil­dren ‘San­ta does not exist’.” Bish­op Anto­nio Staglianò stat­ed dur­ing a reli­gious event that San­ta Claus was cre­at­ed by Coca Cola (which is not true, by the way) and that he doesn’t exist. Peo­ple attacked him for hav­ing ruined Christ­mas for Ital­ian chil­dren and made him apol­o­gize.  

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