Whose Celebration is it Anyway? II:

“Santa Claus is Coming to Town”

A Sermon Preached by the Rev. Douglas M. Donley

December 9, 2007

University Baptist Church

Minneapolis, MN

 

Several years ago, my daughter came home from school with a picture.  Her favorite things back there were rainbows.  In fact, she used to say that her favorite color was rainbow.  Anyhow, this picture had the obligatory rainbow with two figures hovering over it.  I asked who they were and our daughter said, “Well that’s God and Santa Claus of course.”

Both can appear similar, can’t they?  Think about it, “He sees you when you’re sleeping.  He knows when you’re awake.  He knows if you’ve been bad or good, so you better be good for goodness’ sake.”

We could talk a good bit about how Santa Claus seems more like God than God.  Sometimes, as a parent, we have invoked the Santa Claus pact in order to make the kids fall into line.  It works better than God wouldn’t like that. 

I said in my weekly e-mail to you all that I memorized two long Christmas pieces in my youth.  The first was Luke 2:8-20.  We learned this in our church’s children’s choir. We all recited it in unison during the annual Candlelight Service.   I can still see Jean Staley directing us “and in that region, there were shepherds keeping watch over their flocks by night.  And behold the angel of the lord appeared to them and the glory of the Lord shown round about them and they were sore afraid. But the angel of the Lord said, “Be not afraid for behold I bring you good tidings of great joy which shall be to all the people…”

The other one I can still speak from memory was “Twas the Night Before Christmas”, including the long over-looked doublet: “As wild leaves that before the wild hurricane flies when met with an obstacle mount to the skies…”  I used to recite it at family gatherings—my first claim to fame. 

Both of these are held in contrast and as complimentary in the Christmas season.            But is Santa Claus a secular figure?  He is certainly welcome at state-sponsored holiday displays.  Has Christmas become simply another day to feed our consumer frenzy of giving and getting?  Has Santa Claus become the god of the holiday?  He’s certainly seen as the savior of the marketplace.  As we consider whose Celebration it is anyway, then it would behoove us to look closer at Santa Claus and the Christian symbolism behind him. 

Most of us know that Santa Claus is another name for St. Nicholas.  The name actually comes from the Dutch “Sinterklaas” or St. Nicholas.  The Dutch had the playful tradition of Sinterklaas as an elfin figure who came down chimneys to deliver gifts.

The original Saint Nicholas was the Bishop of Myra.  He lived in the fourth century and had a propensity for caring for the poor. He took the Gospel seriously and literally when he read the words of Jesus, “sell all you have and give to the poor.”  He did just that and was best known for giving to the poor.   He was said to have loved children and to have a special place in his heart for sailors and ships.  Christopher Columbus named one of the places he landed after St. Nicholas.  He was briefly imprisoned under anti-Christian emperor Diocletian.  After his release, he attended the Council of Nicaea and died after an unusually long life of natural causes on December 6^th in the year 343.  December 6^th is seen as the date of the feast of St. Nicholas during which people have traditionally remembered the poor and needy, just as Nicholas did. 

There are many apocryphal stories of the wonders that St. Nicholas did during his life.   

There was water flowing out of his grave which was said to have healing powers.

There was a story of St. Nicholas appearing to protect sailors during a storm.

There’s a story of St. Nicholas returning a kidnapped boy to his parents on the eve of his feast day.  The child carried a golden cup from his captors when he returned home.  Perhaps this is the first cup of Christmas cheer. 

There’s a story of a poor man with three daughters who did not have the money for a dowry.  If you did not have a dowry, then it was likely that your daughters would be sold into slavery.  At night, was it midnight?, bags of gold or gold balls were thrown through the window of the family’s home, landing in the stockings drying over the hearth.  This is likely the origin of the tradition of hanging stockings over the fireplace, hoping for gifts from St. Nicholas.  This is also why three gold balls or oranges are symbols of St. Nicholas.  It’s also where the tradition of St. Nicholas as a gift-giving saint came from.  Maybe that’s why I often got a big orange in my stocking growing up.

St. Nicholas was a saint of helping children, caring for the poor and protector weary seaborne travelers.  Like Jesus, St. Nicholas modeled a compassionate life.  When we remember this part of St. Nicholas, we come the closest to the Christian basis for his life.  He belongs as part of the Christmas story. 

St. Nicholas stories flourished in France, Russia, the Netherlands and England.  Over 2000 churches were named after him, including 300 in Belgium and 400 in England.    

According to the St. Nicholas Center ( www.stnicholascenter.org) December 6^th is still the big gift-giving day throughout much of Europe, leaving December 25^th as the focus of Jesus’ birth.

So, how has this great Christian Saint of helping the poor become the jolly old elf peddling at best sentimental joy and at worst, conspicuous mindless consumerism?  The answer comes in part from the poem many of us remember from our childhoods and the songs that emerged from it. 

It was written in the early 1800’s at a time when America was still in the process of defining its seasonal festivals.  At Christmas time, people gave family members hand-made gifts, gleaned from harvest or their own industry.  Mass manufacturing began around that same time, as did the expansion of the railroads.  The availability of goods exploded.  The saintly giver of charity became the god-figure who gave gifts to everyone. 

Borrowing from the Dutch tradition, the bearded portrayal of the Saint became the elfin quasi-magical figure of jolly old St. Nicholas who was “dressed all in fur from his head to his foot.  His clothes were all tarnished with ashes and soot.  A bundle of toys he had flung on his back and he looked like a peddler opening his sack.  He had a broad face and a little round belly that shook when he laughed like a bowlful of jelly…”  Scholars can’t agree who wrote the poem or when, but everyone agrees that this portrayal had an enormous influence on the Americanization of Santa Claus. 

Clever marketing of this image of Santa Claus had him hawking everything from Coca Cola to the Saturday Evening Post, to clothing to every consumer item imaginable.  This image traveled the world as a result of the commercialization, so much that you cannot find the Christian origins of this jolly old elf at all. 

How is it that Santa Claus has eclipsed the Gospel?  How has the generous St. Nicholas—certainly a Christian story—become the secular Santa Claus?   Is it because Santa Claus is more acceptable, more palatable, more consumer-focused?   Is it because the god that we celebrate most during the Christmas season is the one who lives at the mall and not at the church? Whose celebration is it anyway? 

I submit that we already know that Santa Claus has eclipsed the Gospel.  That’s why we make sure we focus on the story behind the market-driven story at church each Advent and Christmas Season. 

I think that Santa Claus can be a benign and joyful presence at Christmas time, but only if we recognize the consumerism is not our god.  This is hard to do.  Our president tells us that the best way to protect ourselves in this world is to buy things.  And yet the debt crisis expands and signs of foreclosure dot our neighborhoods.  The trademarked Santa is not the god to whom we sacrifice.  The god we follow is the one who sets us free to be generous.

What I would like us to reclaim at Christmas, is not the high-pressure, high-debt-inducing, high-guilt-tripped consumerism too often associated with Christmas.  I would like us to reclaim that wise old bishop from Myra who was a generous soul who gave out of his abundance because he recognized that the world needed his generosity and his caring. 

Maybe we could reclaim Santa Claus as the saint of charity, reminding us that we are dependant on the good work of others and that others are dependant on our good work.  Now that’s downright subversiveness in a red suit. 

Maybe at Christmas, we can remember that many are much poorer than we are.  Many have lost homes and loved ones, and jobs and even hope itself.  It would be in the spirit of St. Nicholas to give of ourselves—to help make the world a bit brighter, a bit more hopeful, a bit more just and healing.  For we all need that.  

We do a lot of giving here at UBC.  We give away about $22,000 each year.  Almost every day, I get a call from someone needing help with their rent or needing something to eat or some gifts for their children at Christmas.  Luckily, we have Fellowship Fund which is funded by our Christmas Eve offering to help with rental assistance.  Many of you have donated food and gifts.  Chea Castro here has been dutifully contacting the families in need and all of that food and gifts will be distributed in the next ten days.  Many of you have also supported our Nicaraguan sister church by providing scholarships to their students in the “adopt a god-child” program.  All of these ministries are ways that we live into the spirit of St. Nicholas. 

This is how we know whose celebration it is anyway.  It’s not by the decorations, or the gifts under the tree.  It’s not even the bells and whistles of the great holiday music or the warmth of the hearth or the truly fine Christmas cookies.  We know whose celebration it is when we dare to be generous. 

We dare to be conscious of the poor.   We dare look out for those less fortunate than ourselves.  If and when we do that, then we are living into the true spirit of Christmas.  We are remembering the great St. Nicholas.  We are remembering the spirit of Jesus who inspired St. Nicholas: the poor homeless child, born to unwed parents, shunned by their own families and targets of an ethnic cleansing campaign.  This is how the story of Jesus begins. 

So, as you look at the Santa Claus displays throughout town and even in our homes, look at the saint behind the jolly old elf.  When we do that, and we find ways to bring shelter from the storm of this life, then we may well remember whose celebration it is anyway. 

When we commit to helping the poor in our generosity and searching for justice in our activism, then we can imagine that Saint Nicholas is on his sleigh, maybe going over a rainbow and hanging out with God.  Maybe together they would “exclaim e’er they drove out of sight, ‘Happy Christmas to all and to all a good night.’”