Thank you for this article! It's great to have this written out in a concise article that I can share with other people instead of trying to explain it myself, or trying to get them to watch five of Jonathan's videos, haha.
Anyways, something I was thinking while reading this: Would you say that it actually is Santa who gives children presents, as opposed to their parents, in the sense that though it is the parents who are actually purchasing/making the gifts, the parents offer the gifts up to Santa, who is the one who ultimately returns them to the children? Would this be the same pattern of how we offer our lives up to Christ, and ultimately he returns it to us with eternal life?
I'm one of Arron Iber's Patrons, and so I heard you expound Santa Claus as the Hypostasis of Christmas on his podcast before I read it on your Substack newsletter. Let me explain myself: My granddaughter-in-law and my grandson are college friends of the Ibers, and granddaughter Erin recommended Aron’s podcast to me. And, as that may tell you, I'm an old guy, eighty-two years in the making. However, I was raised in an agnostic family in an agnostic subculture and with an agnostic apprenticeship in biology (PhD 1968 University of Oregon). I was well into my career in the project of modern science, when I got Religion, and was baptized into the one, holy, Catholic and apostolic church in 1980. As an unplanned consequence, I now enjoy many grand and great grandchildren being raised in vastly more traditional Catholic families than ever we were able to offer, as my wife was as agnostic as I, and she was baptized decades after I was and after the kids had long dispersed.
I mention these personal circumstances because I have a Substack site (JBS Palmer, The Spiritual Thing), which I think you might be interested in, but you might not like it at all, because I am a theological and philosophical cobbler. Your writing in Santa Claus as the Hypostasis of Christmas is smooth flowing and majestic and your mental tools appear to be rooted in the modern Scholastic tradition. My mental tools have a very different and idiosyncratic origin. With these tools I've labored most of my life, starting as a teenager, within the project of science, to seek to comprehend the place of humanity in the cosmos.
I have now cobbled together a more or less coherent philosophical and theological conception, which I call the Myth Model. And this conception is what I'm presenting on The Spiritual Thing. However, I'm not presenting it in a reasoned expository manner, but in what I call thought verse, as opposed to poetic verse. Thought verse looks and smells a little like poetic verse but it aims, probably unsuccessfully, to show an idea to the reader which might be apprehended by his multiple intelligences. For instance, your Santa Claus appeals to multiple intelligences in your reader: literary, philosophical, theological and familial. These four modes of intelligence are like four dimensions of a space in which the object of your essay exists in itself. The orthogonal projection of the object into any of these dimensions would be a distortion of its essence. And, the space in which these dimensions themselves exist as a frame of reference, can only be that of a profound narrative. The Myth Model is like that, too.
Anyway, my vain hope is that my thought verse works like strokes of lightening (or the flashes of fireflies) to illuminate facets of both the dimensions and of the Myth Model itself which exists in them. Thought verse #17: Running With The Beagle, which is scheduled to be published this Thursday, May 4, illuminates the intuitive dawning of the role of myth—as true narrative—entering into my strictly scientific mindset. That was when I was just into my thirties as an associate professor of Biology.
Got turned onto this article by Jonathan Pageau and it was super fascinating! A few years back when I started keeping a list for essay ideas I wrote down the question “Is Santa Claus real?” without knowing what the answer would be or what I really thought, other than having a vague dissatisfaction with the simple materialist explanation. I’m happy to have found such a detailed and researched answer.
A question that arises from my Protestant upbringing is this: how do you distinguish the creation of a principality vs the sustaining of one? Did the principality that is Santa always exist and only grew in influence through our attention post-Christ or was it “created” by our attention? You can see how the uncertainty might carry over into implications for Christ, in that he as part of the Trinity exists independently and outside creation, yet is somehow manifested in the world through our attention. Untangling that paradox of God as a being that does not need us to exist but is manifested through us in the world, as distinct from how a principality operates is still beyond my thinking at the moment.
Well-written and engaging article. Stirs up some spirited, well-meaning pushback. Yes, it feels like Santa points to the existance of Christ but by being his earthly opposite, reminding us that materials or matter itself is a gift as Christ is a gift who showed us the gift of spirit and that we are really non-physical beings just having physical experiences.
I think this is why we give presents to celebrate that the physical world is to be cherished and enjoyed. So both can be celebrated simultaneously to understand God as both creator of the spirit world and the flesh. Jesus being God who transmutes and is a symbol for the spirit form. Santa is then actually is a placeholder for Satan, being God who transmutes and 'rules' material form. As both must hold equal weight and reverence in a dualistic universe God created who's sole(soul) law is the balance of energy.
I understand that this hidden truth can only be revealed if you drop the illusion of hell which becomes "easy" since God is everything so it could never smite or punish itself in any way least of all for eternity. To do so would be nonsensical.
Thank you for this article! It's great to have this written out in a concise article that I can share with other people instead of trying to explain it myself, or trying to get them to watch five of Jonathan's videos, haha.
Anyways, something I was thinking while reading this: Would you say that it actually is Santa who gives children presents, as opposed to their parents, in the sense that though it is the parents who are actually purchasing/making the gifts, the parents offer the gifts up to Santa, who is the one who ultimately returns them to the children? Would this be the same pattern of how we offer our lives up to Christ, and ultimately he returns it to us with eternal life?
I'm one of Arron Iber's Patrons, and so I heard you expound Santa Claus as the Hypostasis of Christmas on his podcast before I read it on your Substack newsletter. Let me explain myself: My granddaughter-in-law and my grandson are college friends of the Ibers, and granddaughter Erin recommended Aron’s podcast to me. And, as that may tell you, I'm an old guy, eighty-two years in the making. However, I was raised in an agnostic family in an agnostic subculture and with an agnostic apprenticeship in biology (PhD 1968 University of Oregon). I was well into my career in the project of modern science, when I got Religion, and was baptized into the one, holy, Catholic and apostolic church in 1980. As an unplanned consequence, I now enjoy many grand and great grandchildren being raised in vastly more traditional Catholic families than ever we were able to offer, as my wife was as agnostic as I, and she was baptized decades after I was and after the kids had long dispersed.
I mention these personal circumstances because I have a Substack site (JBS Palmer, The Spiritual Thing), which I think you might be interested in, but you might not like it at all, because I am a theological and philosophical cobbler. Your writing in Santa Claus as the Hypostasis of Christmas is smooth flowing and majestic and your mental tools appear to be rooted in the modern Scholastic tradition. My mental tools have a very different and idiosyncratic origin. With these tools I've labored most of my life, starting as a teenager, within the project of science, to seek to comprehend the place of humanity in the cosmos.
I have now cobbled together a more or less coherent philosophical and theological conception, which I call the Myth Model. And this conception is what I'm presenting on The Spiritual Thing. However, I'm not presenting it in a reasoned expository manner, but in what I call thought verse, as opposed to poetic verse. Thought verse looks and smells a little like poetic verse but it aims, probably unsuccessfully, to show an idea to the reader which might be apprehended by his multiple intelligences. For instance, your Santa Claus appeals to multiple intelligences in your reader: literary, philosophical, theological and familial. These four modes of intelligence are like four dimensions of a space in which the object of your essay exists in itself. The orthogonal projection of the object into any of these dimensions would be a distortion of its essence. And, the space in which these dimensions themselves exist as a frame of reference, can only be that of a profound narrative. The Myth Model is like that, too.
Anyway, my vain hope is that my thought verse works like strokes of lightening (or the flashes of fireflies) to illuminate facets of both the dimensions and of the Myth Model itself which exists in them. Thought verse #17: Running With The Beagle, which is scheduled to be published this Thursday, May 4, illuminates the intuitive dawning of the role of myth—as true narrative—entering into my strictly scientific mindset. That was when I was just into my thirties as an associate professor of Biology.
Got turned onto this article by Jonathan Pageau and it was super fascinating! A few years back when I started keeping a list for essay ideas I wrote down the question “Is Santa Claus real?” without knowing what the answer would be or what I really thought, other than having a vague dissatisfaction with the simple materialist explanation. I’m happy to have found such a detailed and researched answer.
A question that arises from my Protestant upbringing is this: how do you distinguish the creation of a principality vs the sustaining of one? Did the principality that is Santa always exist and only grew in influence through our attention post-Christ or was it “created” by our attention? You can see how the uncertainty might carry over into implications for Christ, in that he as part of the Trinity exists independently and outside creation, yet is somehow manifested in the world through our attention. Untangling that paradox of God as a being that does not need us to exist but is manifested through us in the world, as distinct from how a principality operates is still beyond my thinking at the moment.
This is fantastic. Thank you for writing it.
It brings to mind The Shop of Ghosts by GK Chesterton
Well-written and engaging article. Stirs up some spirited, well-meaning pushback. Yes, it feels like Santa points to the existance of Christ but by being his earthly opposite, reminding us that materials or matter itself is a gift as Christ is a gift who showed us the gift of spirit and that we are really non-physical beings just having physical experiences.
I think this is why we give presents to celebrate that the physical world is to be cherished and enjoyed. So both can be celebrated simultaneously to understand God as both creator of the spirit world and the flesh. Jesus being God who transmutes and is a symbol for the spirit form. Santa is then actually is a placeholder for Satan, being God who transmutes and 'rules' material form. As both must hold equal weight and reverence in a dualistic universe God created who's sole(soul) law is the balance of energy.
I understand that this hidden truth can only be revealed if you drop the illusion of hell which becomes "easy" since God is everything so it could never smite or punish itself in any way least of all for eternity. To do so would be nonsensical.