Santa Claus Is Real: Read His Story

This painting shows Saint Nicholas saving three innocents from the sword

Daddy! Daddy! Read the story. Please. “Twas the night before Christmas and all through the house…”

Before long he got to the part where the round and rather elfish fellow in the red suit slides down the chimney and leaves the presents. The best part for me was not the presents. It was decorating the tree and laying the fire – which never hurt Santa – and pretending to be sitting next to him while we shared the milk and cookies that were always left for him. It was the essence of family in my imagination. It was a warm and wonderful fantasy, and when my parents told me there was no Santa I just kept imagining the Christmas scene anyway. It was too wonderful to let go.

Trouble is – if you want to call it trouble – there really is a Santa. His real name is Nicholas and he lived in the city of Myra in what is now called Turkey. He was a bishop in the Catholic Church in a time when there was only one Church. He served during a time of savage persecution of Christians; he was arrested and tortured for his faith, although he did not die of it. He was one of the leaders participating in the Council of Nicea, called by Emperor Constantine after legalization of the faith, and he had a hand in composing the (still) only universal summary statement of the Faith. He was designated a saint following earthly death and hence the Santa joins the Claus in his name.

The most amazing news about Nicholas is that – amid all he suffered and labored and tended to in his life and ministry – he found great joy traveling the streets of his city and leaving coins in the shoes children placed on their window sills at the end of day. He had a special heart for sailors as well as for children, and he may even be the left-handed source of the proverb that God takes care of sailors and children. His concern for the poor was both real and poignant, yet he is remembered not just as a man of compassion, but of compassion laced with whimsy. Reminiscent of the God He served so well.

In our time we are much more attuned to a fat man in a red suit who will give us anything we ask for – and especially a new boy or girlfriend for Christmas if the seasonal movies tell us anything – than to the child of a carpenter born to die for us in a shabby manger located in a small cave in a forgotten town in Judea where all they produce are the lambs to be ceremonially killed in the capitol city. The fat man requires nothing of us but a willingness to be dazzled by fantasies like my five-year-old Christmas scene; the child wants our whole life to be given over to Him as He gives His for us. On top of that, the child insists on meeting our needs rather than our wants. The trouble is, what powers the fat man’s generosity is the child’s sacrificial reality. Nobody is more aware of that than a fat man who gave his heart and his body in gratitude for the Child.

When I was a parish priest we observed a Christmas custom in each church I led. I had long since replaced cookies and milk with the bread and wine of the Lord’s Supper on Christmas Eve, although God knows to this day I still love the Christmas scene I cherished when I get home from church. At the church we would have one of our members dress as Santa and enter the nave or sanctuary just as I prepared to pray over the Supper. I would catch sight of him and greet him from my station behind the altar. I would acknowledge the pleasure of seeing him, with all the work he had ahead of him this night. He would tell me he wanted to do first things first – on this night of all nights – and that meant worshipping the living Reason for the Season. He would then come forward to receive Communion with the church’s children in tow, and all of us would receive a joy-filled and much needed adjustment to our perspective.

Santa Claus is real, a servant of God and no substitute for Him. Nobody is clearer than St. Nicholas on the nature of the relationship. He is first to say, “Jim, your idea of Christmas as a child comes true only because another child was born, lived and died for you. First things first.”

James A. Wilson is the author of Living As Ambassadors of Relationships and The Holy Spirit and the End Times – available at local bookstores or by e-mailing him at
praynorthstate@charter.net

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Western Journalism

Santa Claus Is Real: Read His Story

Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus. It’s called campaign cash

This piece originally appeared on BillMoyers.com.

If you want to see how grossly money can distort democracy, just go to the state of Virginia, where there are no limits on how big a check can be written for statewide office. Groups and individuals from outside the Old Dominion are taking full advantage, pouring millions into a governor’s race they see as a dry run for the tactics they’ll use in the 2014 midterms and the 2016 presidential race – sort of the way the Spanish civil war turned out to be a testing ground for many of the deadly weapons of World War II. 

 

Billionaires like environmentalist Tom Steyer on the left and the Koch Brothers on the right are placing their bets, but as they say at the track, the horses they’re backing are just a couple of hay burners. Once the home of Washington and Jefferson, James Madison and Patrick Henry, Virginia now has a choice between two mediocrities slavishly devoted to their wealthy contributors.

 

The Democrat, Terry McAuliffe, has been in training for years as courtier to the rich. He has raised hundreds of millions of dollars for the Democratic National Committee, which he chaired for four years, and the campaigns of his Best Friends Forever — Bill and Hillary Clinton — who now are shaking down donors for him.  Along the way, according to The Washington Post, this gregarious bagman used government programs, his huge Rolodex of political connections, and wealthy investors from both parties to enrich himself. He organized a company to build electric cars and promoted it to investors with a prospectus featuring photographs and ample references to his Clinton ties. He even got the former President to show up at the opening of the plant in Mississippi, along with that state’s former Republican governor, Haley Barbour, who made his fortune as a lobbyist in Washington for the tobacco industry.

 

Strange bedfellows, these crony capitalists – you may remember that Hillary Clinton’s brother, Tony Rodham was involved, too, searching out foreign investors for the electric cars. When the spotlight of scrutiny crossed their path, McAuliffe resigned from the company, which is now under investigation by the Securities and Exchange Commission. 

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The Washington Post also reports that one of McAuliffe’s top twenty donors – at $ 120,000 — is the Liberian International Ship and Corporate Registry, which issues flags of convenience to shipping companies that want to dodge taxes and labor regulations, and that McAuliffe invested in an alleged insurance scam that stole identities from the terminally ill. His campaign says that like other investors, McAuliffe was deceived. The fellow in charge of the scheme donated more than $ 25,000 the last time McAuliffe ran for governor, in 2009. Hmmm…

 

In a recent debate, his Republican opponent, state attorney general and right wing zealot Ken Cuccinelli, said that if McAuliffe’s elected, they’ll have to change the state’s motto from “Sic Semper Tyrannis” to “Quid Pro Quo.” That’s Latin for you scratch my back, I’ll scratch yours.

 

But Cuccinelli is in no position to talk. The candidate was drawn into that Virginia money scandal in which Jonnie R. Williams, Sr., CEO of Star Scientific, a company that manufactures dietary supplements, showered lavish presents and perks on the current governor and his wife. Cuccinelli also received a sprinkling of Williams’ largesse. He recently donated the value of what he says he got — $ 18,000 – to charity.

 

What’s more, his donor list includes considerable checks from big tobacco and big coal, including Murray Energy Corporation, which has often been fined for endangering the health and safety of its miners. Last year, its boss, Bob Murray, was discovered insisting that employees contribute time and money to his favorite anti-regulatory candidates – including Mitt Romney – or else.

 

Now Cuccinelli’s touting a major tax cut for the rich, with a plan that, according to the liberal Center for American Progress, would give 47% of a proposed tax reduction to the top five percent of Virginians. The state would lose nearly a billion and a half dollars in revenues so the rich can be even richer.

 

Not surprising, Cuccinelli’s a major climate change denier, as well as a fractious opponent of Obamacare, a woman’s right to choose and gay marriage. He once wanted to make it legal for employers to fire an employee if they were heard speaking Spanish. No wonder he’s the favorite of Citizens United – yes, that Citizens United, the right wing group that got the conservatives on the Supreme Court to give corporations the same free speech rights as real people.   

 

So come Election Day, pity the voters of Virginia. Whether they choose the glad-handing Democrat or the self-righteous Republican, once again, the real winner will be Big Money.

Salon.com

Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus. It’s called campaign cash