St. Nicholas. Kris Kringle. Santa Claus. However you refer to him, the guy’s an asshole.
While the story of Saint Nicholas goes back to around 280 A.D., the modern Santa Claus is far from a saint. According to History.com, in 1804, John Pintard, a member of New York’s Historical Society, distributed woodcuts of the European interpretation of the character at the society’s annual meeting, essentially giving birth to the modern version of the character. The U.S. marketing and advertising machine put the character to work in the ensuing decades, using the character’s likeness in their holiday ad inserts and using the character to draw children to stores and their parents to the check out lines.
But it wasn’t all “innocent capitalism” even back then. In the early 1890s, the Salvation Army was hurting for the cash needed to provide free meals to the food insecure. Their answer? Slap Santa suits on unemployed men and stick them on every corner like some sort of candy-colored Yuletime manwhores to solicit donations for the organization.
So what’s the big deal? At worst, people with few opportunities are exploited by major corporations and organizations. But, at his best, Santa Claus is a hero to children all over. He brings gifts to the good little boys and girls every December 24th. What could be so bad about that?
Actually, there’s a lot wrong with that scenario. From a legal standpoint, let’s take a look at a few of the laws Santa breaks — both on his annual trek across the world and all year round.
- “He sees you when you’re sleeping. He knows when you’re awake.” Most states have wiretapping and eavesdropping laws to prevent against illegal surveillance. There could be federal offenses included, depending on if a computer was used, if the surveillance data was transmitted and received across state lines, and — shudder to think — if Santa’s keeping an eye on minors in various states of undress. None of these invasion of privacy issues even touch on the stalking and harassment.
- “As I drew in my head, and was turning around, down the chimney St. Nicholas came with a bound.” Breaking and entering. Plus, potential property damage from the presence of nine reindeer on the lawn and/or roof.
- Operating a business without a license. Has anyone ever done an environmental impact study on the industrial factory that Santa operates at the North Pole? Is he following Kyoto Protocols and Clean Air Regulations? What about the waste water run off from the factory, the farm, and the elf village? All that sewage has to go somewhere.
- As for the toys, books, movies, and music Santa’s elves make and the old man delivers, there are trademark, patent, and copyright infringements taking place to get kids the items on their Christmas lists each year.
- Regarding the nighttime voyage, there are numerous FAA regulation violations and breeches of sovereign airspace. Additionally, there are issues of crossing international borders — both himself and tariff evasion with his cargo.
Those are just the man-made laws. How about the laws of physics? Assuming that Santa delivers to 378 million children (15% of the under 18 population, as Santa doesn’t appear to handle Mulsim, Hindu, Jewish, and Buddhist children) in 31 hours — moving from east to west to take advantage of the earth’s rotation, that’s just shy of 92 million homes visited (assuming the Population Reference Bureau average of 3.5 children per home and that every home with at least one child has at least one “nice” child. In that case, Santa’s sleigh weighing approximately 353,000 tons travels non-stop at 650 mile per second in order to make his deliveries. The amount of energy, heat, G-forces, etc involved poses a larger threat than anything CERN is doing with the Large Hadron Collider.
You can debate whether or not Santa should be doing hard time or not, but one thing that’s clear is that for Christians fighting the “culture wars” and running around screaming about how our culture is taking the Christ out of Christmas (leaving us with the holiday of “Mas”, I guess?) — Santa is a whole lot sexier than the “reason for the season”. I don’t mean it in terms of physical attraction; I’m not comparing the hotness of an infant versus that of a geriatric felon. Ask any kid which they’d prefer for Christmas this year: a nebulous idea of salvation in some imagined afterlife or an Xbox Series X or PS5. If the kids are being honest, instant gratification wins every time. One has dirge-like songs and hymnals sung about him, the other has all kinds of fun little jingles. One told people to believe in Him and to be good and promised his followers a life of martyrdom before he, himself, was crucified. The other tells people to believe in him and to be good and in return, BOOM!, gifts under the tree once a year. One is surrounded by holier-than-thou angels and saints who look on the world in grim judgment, the other hangs with elves, reindeer, and snowmen. It’s not the heathens co-opting your Christmas holiday, it’s Santa.
And other than a criminal, who is this guy the kids are looking up to? Who’s their role model? According to physicians at the Royal College of General Practitioners in the U.K., a time bomb of health risks just looking for a place to explode. In addition to obesity and an annual night of binge drinking, suspected comorbidities Santa is lugging along like a sack full of trademark-infringed toys include hypertension, diabetes, fatty liver disease, cancer, gout, cardiovascular disease, immune system disfunction, cirrhosis of the liver, pancreatitis, brain damage, and more. Not exactly the model of health for a culture dealing with childhood obesity prior to COVID-related lockdowns that have added inches to our children’s waistlines. Speaking of COVID, who wants an unmasked stranger in their home who has been in the home of every other child on the planet? Santa Claus is this season’s COVID super-spreader.
Both of these concerns lead to the ugly truth — belief in Santa Claus is detrimental to the mental health of kids and leads to children later questioning whether anything they were ever told (hello again, Baby Jesus) is true.
Then there’s the dark side of the North Pole. Sure, Santa gets all the credit for delivering presents to kids every year, but that fame and notoriety is built on the back of unpaid slave labor. Elves are trained to ignore trademark, patent, and copyright laws and create North Pole made products. From all accounts, elves work around the clock all year long, starting production on next year’s batch as soon as this year’s are delivered, with a crunch as Christmas Eve approaches putting extra stress on an already overworked pool of slave labor.
Beyond the elves, there are issues of animal welfare. Reindeer are semi-wild, semi-domesticated. They do not do well in captivity, nor as beasts of burden pulling a sleigh. Moreover, there are no naturally occurring flying reindeer, leading one to the assumption that the reindeer in question have been subject to experimentation that has given them their supernatural abilities without government or ethics commission oversight. It’s not just Santa’s fabled reindeer that suffer, as more and more reindeer have been moved to inhospitable climates to serve as living decorations.
It’s interesting to point out the arbitrariness of the whole naughty and nice list. Kids are told to be good so that they can be on the nice list, but the age at which kids enter the age of reason — where they can actually understand and make informed, rational decisions about naughty versus nice — is about seven years old. Compare that with an average age of 8.5 years old when kids stop believing in Santa Claus, and it’s clear that the jolly old fat man isn’t interested in kids making a decision to be nice. The naughty and nice list is just a cover, a smokescreen for a more insidious truth.
A study by the BMJ released in 2016 shines a light on the reality of the situation. Santa’s naughty and nice list is completely meaningless. The fact of the matter is that Santa disproportionately delivers gifts of a higher value (whether in volume of gifts, retail price of gifts, or both) to the wealthy and gifts of lower value to those children of lower socioeconomic status. There are no naughty kids or nice kids, especially before their minds are sufficiently developed to understand and choose “naughty” or “nice”, there are only kids doing the best they can in the situations that they are born into. No one chooses where their mother’s womb happened to be when they were born. No child wants to grow up disadvantaged. When Santa has the full array of gift making and gift giving at his disposal, he disproportionately bestows said gifts on kids who — through no act of their own — are at a greater advantage and financial privilege than their peers who receive less.
At the end of the day, Santa Claus is a guy who has a job because of corporate marketing, who appears to have an immunity to arrest and prosecution afforded only to the most wealthy and powerful, and rewards the system and those who keep his sleigh flying every year with gifts that would be better distributed to the under-served. All while using slave labor and genetically modified beasts to do the heavy lifting. He steals the spotlight this time of year, every year. He’s a terrible role model who damages the health and well-being of those who follow him — whether because they hope to get more/better presents or because they’ve fallen for his cult of personality.
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again… Santa Claus is a piece of shit.
