Church was addressing something far larger and more insidious than the failure of faith in a magical overweight elf. He was addressing the most fundamental question Humanity has ever had to address, one with profound consequences, one every person must ask; "Please tell me the truth; is there a God?"
Yes, Virginia, there is a God.
Santa Claus is a fable cherished the world over. Throughout all nations his position is unchallenged in the hearts and minds of children, and adults play along to keep the magic alive as long as possible. He goes by many names; Santa, St. Nick, Kris Kringle, Father Christmas. He looks a bit different in different lands, but always he is the same, bringing gifts, spreading joy, encouraging goodness and charity. He is an archetype of all that Mankind wishes to be.
And his loss, the ending of belief in Santa, is traumatic; a death of innocence.
Santa Claus has driven many men to atheism. When the child realizes his parents have been lying to him, been making up stories to make life easier and more pleasant, he often transfers this disappointment to other aspects of his life. If there is no Santa Claus, if he is a comforting lie, is not God likewise? Is not God a case of wishful thinking? Is this notion of a Savior not childish foolishness, better left with our stuffed animals and imaginary friends in the never-land of innocence? The loss of Santa Claus often leads one to precisely what Church warns little Virginia against; skepticism of a skeptical age.
But we accept things on faith all of the time; we accept that the laws of the Universe will not change arbitrarily. We accept that other people are real and not a figment of our imagination - despite the fact that we do not perceive them directly (all we perceive are photons and vibrations in matter). We accept that there really is a place called Tashkent. We accept that all of science is not something made up to trick us (like Global Warming, of course). We have faith in the existence of atoms, of subatomic particles, of all manner of things we have never actually touched or seen. Granted, we accept the existence of such things because of the evidence of our senses, but those could be misleading.
In point of fact, quantum physics speculates that every event, from the smallest subatomic particle to the largest macro-cosmological catastrophe, both happens and does not happen. What determines this? The observer. When an observer attempts to see where an electron is in it's orbit around an atomic nucleus, he is said to "collapse the wavefront" and thus it has a given position in space. It does not have one until he observes it (something called the Uncertainty Principle). Ditto Relativity; at very high speeds time moves at a different rate relative to the observer. It's as though consciousness is what makes the Universe real.
So is our blind faith in what we can see, touch, feel, justified? Is Mr. Church right to argue that the "concrete" things are the illusory ones, and that the greater truth lies behind the veil?
Santa Claus evolved from the story of
St. Nicholas. Nicholas was a devout Third Century man, born to very wealthy parents, who became Bishop of Myra (in what is now Turkey). Taking the command of Christ to sell all his possessions and give them to the poor, Nicholas became the model of Christian charity, giving gold to the poor and needy and especially protecting children. His generosity and love so impressed people he became a legend, and his legend grew until the man himself was lost to the archetypical figure, the jolly man in red who gives children gifts on Christmas.
Generous as St. Nicholas may have been, he did it for one reason; to honor Christ. It was Christ who gave St. Nicholas the example to imitate. It was the love of Christ that St. Nicholas sought to convey. And Santa Claus is today a shadowy image of that love, a children's fable, certainly, but a model, a representation, of the love of God and of Christ. Much like a globe is a shadowy model of this amazing world we inhabit, so too is Santa. Disavowing the existence of God because Santa isn't real is like disavowing the world because an old map doesn't show the Americas.
Love - that is the one thing we all want, the one truly universal human impulse. Not just human; even animals seek it. Love is perhaps more real than the material we find so important in our journey through this world. And love cannot be explained by material things. Try as they might, materialists can find no physical explanation for real love. Love seems anathema to this world, too; the law of the jungle, kill-or-be-killed, Darwinian evolution, all stem from a loveless premise, a selfishness. And while many people are selfish indeed, that is not at all what they ultimately seek; often their thirst for love leads them to their selfish ways. Santa Claus is so cherished because he embodies love. Yet Santa is but a dull reflection of God who is love at it's purest. Santa merely gives children toys; God gives us life, nurtures us in our sojourn in this world, and grants us salvation. In the end, most religions believe there is a paradise awaiting, and to the Christian that paradise is a free gift from God. To get there God Himself had to reach out, become one of us, suffer, and die a horrible death. The sacrifice of the Son of God was so supreme, the ultimate act of love. And Santa gives gifts on the birthday of Jesus, as a small token of thanks, an act of remembrance.
Not believe in God? You may as well not believe in Love.
The Apostles believed in Love. They believed in it so strongly they willingly went to their deaths, with the option of renouncing Jesus open to them at any time and they would save their lives. Indeed, they would have been handsomely rewarded. They knew Jesus personally, and preferred death to disowning Him. Through the ages men have been martyred for Christ, dying to obtain that love which cannot be found here on this weary world. Even the man who ordered his death would be touched by it; Pontius Pilate, Roman Governor, would see his wife Claudia Procula become a Christian and one of the founders of the Church - and a saint.
We have had witnesses to love come back from death (thanks to modern medicine) reluctantly telling of the triumph of love beyond this world - and the Christ waiting for them at the end of a long tunnel, bathed in the light of love. We've had the appearances of Saints from the grave, of Angels, and of the Mother of Jesus herself (Mary appeared numerous times over the centuries,
including at Zeitun, Egypt before a vast crowd including Egyptian president Nasser, and on television.
All these witnesses are ignored by a skeptical age.
This same skeptical age that believes in Gaia and Global Warming, Socialism, and the inherent goodness of Man (against all evidence). An age that demands proof from God that He exists, despite an inborn knowledge in most people, despite God being a universal belief held by every nation and people and tongue, no matter how isolated or insular. An age that cannot stand to place Him above their own incomplete knowledge. An age that cannot understand that God is not a bully, and won't force Himself on us by making His presence undeniable. An age that is learning of the importance of consciousness to the fundamental structure of the Universe, and even of the brain itself, yet wants to find that the brain is the answer to human existence alone so as to be able to disown the "childlike" belief in God. Mind, consciousness, love, none are explainable by physical means alone. Free will. The modern age wants to reduce these things to atomic interactions, so as to remove God from His throne. There is a desperate attempt to make free will, consciousness, love into mere byproducts of electro-chemical processes. And yet, every time this project appears on the verge of success, something new upsets the enthronement of matter and matter's human god. Neuroscience is busy mapping the brain, figuring out what different parts do, and just when it appeared they can reduce our existence down to mechanistic principles something new comes along to upset that mechanical worldview. For instance, research shows that the brain can actually be
rebuilt just by THINKING (neuroplasticity). Science is fun, science teaches us to do many wonderful and amazing (and sometimes very destructive) things, but always the goalposts are moving to the horizon, ever out of our reach. Why? Because there are some things we cannot learn and understand without Faith. The skeptical age believes, you see, that everything is open to the mind of Man; one of the many uncritical acts of faith required by modernity.
Yet we are told we must deny belief in God, belief in a Savior, belief in Love by the same people who demand uncritical loyalty to these lesser things.
Were this really a skeptical age, we would first and foremost doubt our atheism, doubt our materialism. No, this is a superstitious age, an age of misfounded belief. We believe that we can know and understand everything, and that what we do not know or understand does not exist. By modern reasoning bacteria did not exist in 1100 a.d. By modern reckoning black holes were children's fables. The modern view is that the sun revolved around the Earth, because people in the Middle Ages thought it did and they scoffed at the ancients who thought maybe it was the other way around. Copernicus had no real evidence to support his theory; he still had to include epicycles, those apparent backward movements in the orbits of the planets that result from elliptical orbits. By modern materialist standards Copernicus was plain superstitious. If it is unknown then it doesn't exist.
Yet they are willing to believe all sorts of miraculous things; quantum entanglement, where two particles can be at opposite sides of the Universe and when something happens to one particle it instantaneously happens to the other. They refer to
quantum spookiness, because what happens is spooky indeed from an intellectual standpoint. Despite the nigh-unto miraculous happenings in modern science, we are told we should not believe in God. How can there be such a thing? We can have subatomic particles "communicate" over billions of light years and think that is normal, but we cannot believe in a Creator? We can witness virtual particles, matter flashing into and out of existence instantaneously, but not believe in a Creator? We can ask where all the anti-matter has gone, why dark energy is so low, any of a myriad infinitely counterintuitive things, but we cannot even ask about a Creator? Why? Just because we can't measure Him?
Is a blood cell cognizant of the existence of the human being it inhabits?
But the atheist would have us think that our age-old belief in God is purest superstition, and that we should turn our hearts and minds to this world, to the pale pleasures of life on Earth, to eat, drink, and be merry because tomorrow we die forever and ever. This is counter-intuitive to human beings in every way, and counter-intuitive to centuries of philosophy and science, yet there it is. The disappointment of learning the truth about Santa Claus has kindled a cold, dark fire.
Yet anyone who has ever played the game where a story is told to one person and it is repeated from one to another for ten or so repetitions, knows you end up with an entirely different story. People are fallible and what is a fundamental reality can be distorted over time. We see through a glass darkly. It's part of why God had to come Himself; to set the record straight. The multiplicity of religions is actually evidence in favor of Christianity, because it suggests an inherent understanding that there is a God or gods, that there is something more than what is seen and felt. Atheism would be the natural default position to humanity; it isn't because we inherently understand there is something more. But we were lost children, and had to find a redeemer to lead us out in our blindness.
They are wrong, Virginia, just as your little friends are wrong to doubt. Santa Claus IS real, as an image of an all loving God, an image of His son Jesus. Love is real, and so is the Savior. We may see Him in different forms because our senses are weak and our minds simple. We are bound by space, by time, by silly notions that pass for thought being told to us by people puffed up with their own importance.
No God! Thank God! He lives, and he lives forever. A thousand years from now, Virginia, nay, ten times ten thousand years from now, he will continue to make glad the heart of childhood - and of the race of Man. He will triumph, for He alone is what is really real.
Yes, Virginia, there is a God, and Christmas is His birthday.
