SANTA CLAUS TAKES A HIT, NOT FOR RUNNING OVER GRAN'MAW

SANTA AND JESUS

This was a good year for Jesus and an off year for Santa.  At least in  the church that we attend.  Three homilies by two different priests made the point that Jesus and Santa share the same day, and we have to choose Jesus over Santa. Here, you see the priest sitting among the children at the Christmas Mass discussing that matter with them in a question and answer format.   I have to confess that as a long time unbeliever in Santa and a life-long believer in Jesus, I was happy to hear what I was hearing.
I think that I was about 8 or 9 when I told my father that I knew that Santa is a hoax.  He asked me how I knew, and I told him that all the gifts we ever received had real people's names on them.  We were always told to thank the giver of the gift.  So I told him that I was off the Santa kick.  Much to my disappointment, he told me to be careful how I talked to my brother and sisters so as not to ruin their Christmas.  I was disappointed then, and I continue to be, because I can't figure out why my father and my grandfather would not have come clean with us.  I live with that to this day.
God blessed me with a spouse who is not from our culture, so I had no barriers to bring up my children in the truth about Christmas.  When my wife asked me about Santa Claus, I said, "We work for what we give them and they have to know that what they get is a sign of OUR love for them in the celebration of the birthday of Jesus."  When the children asked us about Santa, we told them that some people believe in him, but that we don't and that Jesus, His Mother and Our Guardian Angels mean more to us than Santa.  So far, Our boys have not been committed to an asylum, so I guess we didn't ruin their lives.
About a year ago I also developed the thought that all the creepy paranoia about privacy seems to be displaced if we try to make our children believe in some jolly old guy who works out of the North Pole with a bunch of elves who somehow has the power to know everything about us, even our inner most, most personal  behavior, even if we never see him.  Yeesh, what a crock!
Anyway, that's my thought as I have cultivated it through the years.  This year, Santa knew that I was going to expose him on the World Wide Web so he brought me absolutely nothing.  Everything I got came from those who love me unconditionally and I didn't have to worry about the reindeer ruining the new solar panels on my roof.  Oh, and we saved on cookies and punch too and celebrated by skipping our cholesterol pill for the day.
Oh, by the way -- No, I did not drink.