Ho, ho, ho! Santa, Satan, and Lies

He is a liar, and the father of it.:”(John 8:44)”: He walks the earth as a roaring lion, seeking to devour.:”(1 Peter 5:8)”: He is that old serpent, the adversary of all that is of God, the great dragon, the Devil. He is Satan, deceiver of the world.:”(Revelation 12:9)”:

And Christians (I hope) are wise enough to not have anything to do with him. We know that he is the father of lies, lies which people believe over and above believing in Jesus. Lies which set him at odds with the Way, the Truth, and the Life.:”(John 14:6)”: Lies that are so vile that we shouldn’t just dislike them, we should hate them.:”(Psalm 119:104)”:

And as of yet, Satan has yet to convince the church to yearly celebrate him openly.

That doesn’t stop most Christians from annually flying the banner of Santa Claus in a manner that they somehow think is “keeping Christ in Christmas” or is otherwise celebratory of the one Eternal God, Jesus Christ.

What does Santa Claus have to do with the liar Satan?

I won’t bore you with the similarities in their names.:”(“Satan” has its origins in Hebrew, whereas “Santa” comes from Dutch and means “saint” if anything. We can all stop saying “Santa is just one letter away from Satan” now. Thanks.)”: I’m by no means an English-language supremacist and I hope I am never guilty of basing any kind of doctrine upon an English language coincidence.

Rather, it should simply be pointed out that Santa, like Satan, is a liar. For those who hate every false way as the Psalmist (and, incidentally, God), that should be enough to leave the Santa Claus mythologies out of our celebrations and out of our homes.

Without diving too deeply, let me simple ask, what do bad children get in their stockings? Do any of them actually receive coal or some other undesirable?

I work in retail (in a toy department, of all places), and during this time of year I often hear parents using lies to get their children to behave. “Sit down in that cart and be quiet or Santa won’t bring you anything for Christmas!” “If you want that, you better be good from now till Christmas or Santa won’t bring it!” Lies, lies, lies! And honestly it isn’t just during the fall that children are manipulated with Santa; throughout the rest of the year, I hear such as, “That’s awfully expensive, dear; maybe Santa can bring it for Christmas.” Or, to put it another way, “That’s awfully expensive, dear; lie lie lie lie lie lie Christmas.”

“Remember the Reason for the Season” + “Peace on Earth and Good Will toward Man” + LIES = A Good Thing? Whoever came up with this odd combination had a few wires crossed, methinks. Even the government plays a part in keeping those wires crossed, though perhaps it shouldn’t be unexpected for them to promote lies.

Being good is pushed from being a function of honoring God and parents. Rather, be good because your parents lied to you about a myth named Santa.

Here’s an off the wall idea: What if Christian parents made Jesus Christ the center of their home? What if no place was given to a lying, gluttonous:”(How many hundreds of thousands of households have milk & cookies awaiting Dear Old Saint Nick?)”: adulterer?:”(While Mrs. Santa presumably never leaves the North Pole, Santa Claus spends time kissing mother underneath the mistletoe each year. That’s just creepy.)”: What if every false way was actually hated? How quickly the church would benefit from such a move!

Satan is real, and he loves it when people lie. I bet he’s eating up this whole Santa Claus thing, especially insofar as it has permeated Christian culture. What a wonderful thing for him, when even children of God fall into lies. He probably parades it through Heaven in accusation of the saints; and while Jesus is our Advocate interceding in such cases, we really shouldn’t be giving any place to the Devil.

Let your words be true, and let your focus be Jesus. Proclaim as excitedly and publicly as people proclaim Santa Claus, and perhaps fewer ministers and other Christian faithfuls will spend their nights weeping over how ineffective church has become.

7 thoughts on “Ho, ho, ho! Santa, Satan, and Lies”

  1. Interesting article to say the least. But your reference number 8. Have you listened to that song? Adultery is quite a shot in the dark.

  2. Glen, I understand where you’re coming from, but if the lyrics tell me anything, it’s that the child in the song is convinced that the Santa is really Santa and not his dad in costume. The li’l guy even thinks it’d be funny if dad caught his wife and Santa gettin’ extra friendly. Presumably, cavalier behavior on the part of the mother in the song is so commonplace as to not be thought of twice by the son (or the father, who’d merely get a chuckled out of it!).

  3. Ok, I like the version of the song that a woman sings (an older version I think). Also The “li’l guy” assumes it must be dad, and if it’s not dad he’s telling on Mom, so it’s not an accepted thing by the child, he plans to do something about it.

    Glen

  4. “Oh what a laugh it would have been, if daddy had only seen…” very strongly implies that daddy is separate from Santa within the continuity of the song.

    And I cannot imagine what kind of home the song speaks of within which such an act would be met with laughter (of all things!) rather than righteous jealousy.

    I wonder what would happen if we subbed in one of the highest models of marriage we could possible have…

    I saw Israel kissing a golden calf
    At the foot of Sinai last night
    She didn’t see me descending the mountain with her law
    She thought I was on the summit still with God

    Then I saw Israel rubbing that golden calf
    All across its shiny, smooth surface
    What a laugh it would have been
    If God had only seen
    Israel kissing a golden calf last night.

    Sung, of course, from the perspective of Moses, a child of both Israel and God. The comparison to a child seeing mother and father is fairly apt, and I’m fairly certain Father God’s reaction caused more than a laugh! Seems to me that men ought to be just as jealous for their wives as God is with His.

  5. “Santa put his arm around mama
    And mama put her arm around him
    So if Santa Claus aint daddy
    well then I’m a gonna tell on them.”

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