Father Christmas - Naughty or Nice?

At this time of year, serious-minded people start agonising over whether it is all right to ‘lie’ to children about Father Christmas.  Religious fundamentalists worry about whether they are offering children a false god who may seem more attractive than the real God – bringing tangible presents in your stocking instead of a lifelong, or multi-lifelong, journey towards holiness.  Fundamentalist atheists worry about whether fairy-tales entice children into believing in the supernatural instead of looking for materialist explanations for everything.  Psychologists worry about whether the sense of being watched may be oppressive.

Speaking as both an autistic person who sometimes finds it hard to tell whether people are joking or serious, and a Christian who believes that honesty is important, I’d say they’re worrying about nothing.  As a child, I could easily see that Father Christmas belonged to the category marked ‘stories and make-believe’ rather than the one marked ‘lies’.  Mummy playing Father Christmas was no more a lie than me playing at being an otter, or playing a shepherd in the Nativity play.

Encouraging greed is a much more realistic concern.  Adverts try to blackmail parents into believing that, if they truly love their children, they will buy everything the children have asked Father Christmas for, even if it means taking out a loan and being in debt for months afterwards.  On one programme about poverty, I heard a mother describing how heart-breaking it was to have to manage her children’s expectations of what Father Christmas might bring them. 

Well, yes, I thought – it’s sad if you’re too poor to have any celebration at all.  But in general, isn’t ‘managing children’s expectations’ what all responsible parents do?

When I was about four, my mother explained to me that Father Christmas had limited room in his sleigh to bring presents for all the children in the world, which was why he just brought the little toys, fruit and nuts and chocolate coins that went in a stocking, and left it to family and friends to bring the big presents.  Otherwise, it would have been hard to explain why I needed to write thank-you letters to uncles and aunts.

In Laura Ingalls Wilder’s On The Banks Of Plum Creek, Laura and her sister want Christmas presents, but Pa needs plough-horses to grow food for the family, and is unlikely to have any money left to buy treats.  Ma explains to the girls that ‘Santa Claus’ is not just one man, but is wherever people stop being selfish and want to make each other happy.  The girls realise that what they need to do, to make this a happy Christmas, is to wish for ‘Santa Claus’ to bring horses for Pa.

Theologians often worry about the danger of ‘seeing God as a cosmic Santa Claus’.  I think our childhood idea of Father Christmas probably does colour our adult idea of God – which is why it is important to get Clausology right.

Some songs teach bad Clausology.  One warns: ‘He knows if you’ve been bad or good, so be good, for goodness’ sake!’  But if you are ‘being good’ only for the sake of being brought presents rather than punishment, you certainly aren’t being good for the sake of goodness itself.

Another goes to the opposite extreme, claiming that, ‘He doesn’t care if you’re bad or good, he loves you just the same.’  But surely, if Father Christmas (or God) loves you, then he must care very much that you should learn to be as good as possible – and not just ‘good’ in the sense of doing what your parents want, but of growing to be a principled, loving human being.  These definitions may not always coincide.

In ‘William’s Christmas Eve’, eleven-year-old William meets a small urchin who naïvely tells him that she is asking Father Christmas to bring a good Christmas dinner for her father, a burglar who is being released from prison on Christmas Eve.  William and his friend Joan, dismayed that a kid still little enough to believe in Father Christmas is about to be so cruelly disappointed, steal all the food from William’s Christmas party to take it to the ex-convict and his family.  William’s mother is not amused – but I’m sure St Nicholas, patron saint of repentant thieves, would sympathise.

As a child, I was more law-abiding than William, but far less generous-spirited.  So, while the idea that Father Christmas brings presents only to good children didn’t feel oppressive to me, it did sometimes make me disgustingly priggish.  One year, I actually kept a list of my brothers’ misdemeanours, to give to my mother in her capacity as Father Christmas.  I am not really sure what would have been the best way for her to respond.  Considering how religious I was, ordering me to copy out Romans 14.10 a hundred times might have been a suitable punishment.

I was, at least, learning that Christmas is about giving as well as getting.  One of my happiest memories from childhood Christmases was the year my father took my brothers and me shopping to create a Christmas stocking for my mother, with a chocolate orange, a bottle of perfume, and a cassette of Noël Coward songs, to which I added a little clay model I had made.  Another is of packing a shoebox of presents for a child in a poor country.  He wrote us a thank-you letter, and my father wrote back to him.

So, go on being Father Christmas – as long as Christian parents teach their children how God gave himself to us as a Christmas present, not because we were good, but because we were bad; and parents of other faiths teach their children the meaning of their own festivals; and people of all faiths and none remember to give to those who really, really need it.  It’s too late for most of the Samaritan’s Purse shoebox collections, but you can still send a box online to children in Moldova, and there are many more appeals both religious and secular.  Remember: ‘Santa Claus is everywhere, and besides that, he is all the time.’