DECEMBER 15, 2021 – No “unified theory” exists for explaining the contradictions that define humanity. And yet . . . maybe a central truth resides within our species.
I’ve always been a true believer in Santa Claus, and I’m scandalized by people who would punch him in the face. Today’s issue of The New York Times reported on just such a case. Bishop Antonio Staglianò of Noto, Sicily, it turns out, tried to give Santa a big, bloody nose. Recently, the Bishop lectured a crowd of visiting school children that Saint Nick was no saint but one big, fat faker, the disgusting creation of Coca-Cola, a piece of “American junk.”
Talk about throwing Coke ice on a troubled world!
The Bishop’s rant caught everyone off guard—and gave Italian right-wingers a cause célèbre: the growing threat of “cancel culture.” Except . . . wait. Something’s amiss. The Bishop is a conservative Catholic. He wants to keep the kids on the straight and narrow: believe in the Jesus story outta Bethlehem, not the S.C. story outta the North Pole (or local mall).
If I’m a religious, conservative American, how do I react to this contradictory message and its condemnation of “American junk”? How do I square my opposition to “cancel culture” with my love for the baby Jesus?
I think I’m going to explode . . . or . . .
I’ll react consistently with my usual inconsistency. What I can’t reconcile I’ll attribute to subterfuge, so that all that remains will comport to my worldview replete with crisscrossed illogic, inconsistency, and hypocrisy. I’ll pray the rosary at the same time I put the “Santa” back in “Christmas.” I’ll vote for candidates who want “government” off my back but actively in my corner. I’ll go on denigrating all Democrats as “radical leftists” because that’s what VaticanFox dictates and because Democrats stole the election, which thievery violates the Eighth Commandment. I’ll condemn the Communists—easily identified as people who think government should help people I don’t know or like. I’ll toss an extra bill at the Salvation Army bell-ringer outside the grocery store and keep on blaming residents of the Salvation Army homeless shelter for sleeping in “beds they made for themselves.”
I’ll put a lighted crèche out in my front yard and atop my roof, a plastic Santa and sleigh pulled by eight, plastic, illuminated reindeer. I’ll wish good health to my neighbors but not get vaccinated against a raging virus.
I’ll go on living in a disordered world wrapped in misinformation and contradictions. When forced to choose between Santa and Jesus, I’ll select both, and I won’t be wrong. Despite our dysfunctionality, truth resides and thrives in the story of each—the story of a timeless, giving, sharing, loving Santa is fully reconcilable with the story of a timeless, giving, sharing, loving Savior.
It’s the Bishop, not I, who’s wrong. Santa isn’t “American junk.” He’s the universal symbol of light and hope—Coke in hand or not.
And to think Bishop Grinch almost got away with canceling Christmas!
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© 2021 by Eric Nilsson
