Santa Claus is Not Real - Merry F-ing Xmas.

[Rigwyn]

Santa Claus is not real.

This might not come as a surprise to you unless you are a kid or a really naive adult, and you might ask why on earth I would make such a painfully obvious point. Is Rigwyn preaching to the choir? No. I assure you that there are many educated adults who would still believe in Santa Claus if someone wasn't kind enough to inform them of their err.

Don't believe me? Read on.



So how do we know that Santa Claus is not real? I mean, everyone talks about him and there are songs about him and his old lady and gosh darn it, if you don't believe in him, he won't shimmy his fat ass down your chimney and leave presents under your Christmas tree, right? Isn't that reason enough to just believe and not question?

Questioning things that we are told to just believe in takes all the magic out of the experience. It was intellect, a desire for knowledge, and civil disobedience that lead Adam and Eve to being cast out of paradise, was it not? Were these nude flesh-pets not right in challenging the authority of their master? We do believe that there was in fact, a naval free Adam and Eve - the very first humans ever to exist, don't we?   ( I won't touch upon Adam's insatiable desires and his proclivity for animals that drove god to reluctantly make a woman for him... not today, at least ) 

As ridiculous as the stories of our favorite religions and of Santa Claus may sound, we are taught not to discredit these stories based on our judgment alone, but instead of repress our skepticism and disbelief and to instead "have faith" and just believe because that's what good people do. This my friend, is the path of ignorance. I call it ignorance because it involves ignoring what is painfully obvious. It leads people down a scary path of doubting their ability to discern truth from fiction with their own mental facilities and into creating all sorts of wacky, convoluted logic to justify their erroneous beliefs.

So how does one go about determining what is true, and what is false? And does it really matter if we know truth from fiction, or is it alright to just play it safe and be ignorant about it? I mean, what harm can it do to remain ignorant, right? If you doubt and you are wrong about it, then you will burn in hell for eternity and when you cry out to god for so much as a drop of water to quench your tongue, he will turn his back on you. 

We cannot prove that there is no Santa Claus because we cannot see him or detect him in any way. If we could, then we could prove that he exists, right? I mean see him ... not like when you see him in the mall burping up liquor while collecting money for the poor, but like seeing him at the north pole in real snow with a real beard and deer in his front yard with nothing to eat but feces and yellow snow. Surely, if we saw a man in red with a real beard and deer and midgets all dressed in green with stripy socks and curly tipped shoes, we would have our answer. Santa Claus would be real, right?

Not so fast.

Part two of the question is, even if we prove that Santa Claus is indeed real, are the stories about him real too or are they horribly embellished? Has this poor ( and I mean poverty-stricken-poor ) man who lives all alone at the north pole ( which is a desert, technically ) with nothing to eat or drink ( aside from his starving deer, imaginary elves and yellow snow ) been made out to be some sort of immortal hero who does fantastic, unbelievable things so that children have something to cheer about, and parents have a way to extort their kids into being obedient little Lemmings? When's the last time you heard a parent tell their child, "You've been really good and docile, Eugene. I'm going to tell Santa."

Sadly, we cannot validate these stories. They sound wonderful and magical if you just ignore the fact that they are flat out impossible. They are candy for the minds of idiots, and a reason to face palm for those who know truth from fiction.

Do YOU believe in a form of Santa Claus?

[Aramara Meibi]

http://realitysandwich.com/238049/shaman-claus-the-shamanic-origins-of-christmas/

[Rigwyn]

Interesting article, Aramara. I'm curious though, what they meant by this:

"The shaman’s journey and return was ultra-important to the survival of the whole community.  What they brought back with them was often a matter of life and death.  And time and again the shaman and the people, through these experiences that they deemed not only sacred but divine, would learn knowledge and wisdom directly from the sacred plants, their journeys, and from the spirits they interacted with.  This was a kind of life blood for their way of being.  This was the gift.  The celebration was actually a kind of celebration of life, continued survival and renewal; an honoring of the spirits, animals, plants and natural world that gave them the gift of life and knowledge of life."

So some dude get's fucked up shrooms, trips his ass off ( or her ), and then tells everyone about how awesome his or her trip was? Ehm... Here's the thing, if you assume for a moment that it was just a trip and that whatever wisdom was brought back was either:

a. Something he could have figured out without trippy drugs
or
b. Just something that "became" fact due to confirmation bias or something like that

Then the whole story just falls apart. It's just a man getting shitty in his tent with a tree. I'm not trying to shoot this down, I loved the story and all and had to laugh at how similar it was to my post at some points, but the notion that the shaman could obtain some knowledge or benefit that was otherwise unobtainable, seems to be the glue that holds all of this together.

Do you have any insight into what this dude would allegedly glean?

[Aramara Meibi]

couldn't tell you any particulars no, but the shamanic journey is Campbell's hero's journey, the journey into the underworld to get the magic elixir needed to restore the kingdom, etc. To really understand it you'd have to put yourself into the typhonic mindset of early hunter/gatherer man, a world where magic is the power over life and death, the power to kill and to resist being killed, the power to invoke Eros (prana) and stave off Thanatos (taboo), where the notion of a self separate from nature is only just budding, where the notion of time, of a past and a future, could only extend as far as the season. So the boon retrieved from contact with ancestral spirits could be as simple as 'when to hunt', or 'when to relocate', or 'when the river is going to flood'. Knowledge most valuable to emerging man (or any tribe who still exists in this typhonic conscious state, such as in the deep Amazon). The shaman or medicine man gains his power through being right; if his boon serves the survivability of the people, the people begin to revere him, next generational shamans take up his practices, articles, and tools, they eat his shrooms (actually drink the piss of the reindeer who ate the shrooms), sing his songs, play his drum, wear his funny red hat, etc., because they have become imbued with magical energy (mana) through their association with the powerful shaman.

[MishkaL1138]

I'm more concerned -read: apalled- that you thought a parent would have the heart (or lack thereof) to name their children Eugene. If my name were Eugene I'd pretty much believe in Santa Claus until well past my teenage years, or at least until I finished school. I'd need a scapegoat, a surefire way of knowing that putting up with all the cruel load of bullcrap that I'd get from the other kids would grant me a top rank at the Nice List, and that maybe my parents hated me for giving me such a name, and I'd try to make it up for them by doing house chores, unwittingly positioning myself over at the top of their thoughts when it came to gifts, probably over an elder going to university that year - much to their dismal.

However, Eugene is not a popular name nowadays, or I like to think so. Still, answering your question, I do believe in Santa Claus: it's called positiv reinforcement. While Aramara is going out into shamanistic and old philosophy discourses, I'd like to take a more down to earth point of view and explain why figures like Santa Claus, the Three Wise Men, the Boogeyman, and other good and bad figures of folklore and tradition are actually reinforcements in the raising of a kid or multiple of them.

Now, I'm not saying raising a kid is easy. I don't have one, but from memories, bitter and resentful parents (mine still like to torment me with things I did over 20 years ago), and what I've seen, I'll have to say it's pretty fu... funny... and hard. Very hard. So why not grab these kids, and tell them some magical man, located out in the woods outside Rovaniemi, Finland, near the polar circle, is watching him like the Big Brother, with a worldwide network of elven spies and fairy slaves (because, let's face it, fairies are the lowest race of magical beings), and manages an Access database with the name of all the Nice and Naughty children.

You don't know how well it works in some cases - that is, when you're not dealing with an extremely rowdy kids, one of those in which you think a muzzle, restraint jacket, and leash are not only justified but required. The positive reinforcement (as well as the negative one, which would be taking their gifts and toys away) is older than the legend of St. Nicholas, much, much more. Which brings me to my next point: now that we've decided believing in Santa Claus (or St. Nick, or Father Noël, or whoever) is actually a good mechanism to educate a child, is he real?

It has been said and proven that St. Nick was actually a person, and must have been quite a good one if he got to become a saint. This man would buy gifts and hand them over to kids (I like to think he visited the orphanages in his town, making the Christmas of many a tuberculositic kid), all out of his pocket. Eventually, and after his death -despite miracles, saint men and women aren't especially longevous, not when compared to biblical figures-, the figure of Saint Nick went on to become that venerable grandpa with a big beard, dressed sharply for their epoch, handing out gifts while parading through the streets. It's still a thing they do in some scandinavian places.

Going back to the original question: I do believe in Santa. I love Santa, or the idea of it. Whenever I see an old man dressed in red (blame The Coca-Cola Company for that image), sporting a long white beard, curly white locks, and lugging a big round belly around at the mall, I can't help but smile. Because growing old sucks, and realizing that Santa isn't really magical, but a fabrication of your parents, is a very disappointing thing, and sometimes we need to reassure ourselves thinking that the man does exist, and will have nice gifts for everyone - because in the end, no kid is naughty enough to warrant a piece of coal, except maybe as a joke.

PS: Santa brought me a new Lego Sar Wars set this year, what about you?
PPS: Also, Riggy, screw you for making me log in.

[Rigwyn]

PS: Santa brought me a new Lego Sar Wars set this year, what about you?
PPS: Also, Riggy, screw you for making me log in.

LOL, nice to hear from you too Mishka
Mrs. Claus  gave me a headache with all her holiday drama. I need pills and alcohol... or better yet, maybe some of Aramara's tricksy fungi.

The shaman or medicine man gains his power through being right; if his boon serves the survivability of the people, the people begin to revere him, next generational shamans take up his practices, articles, and tools, they eat his shrooms (actually drink the piss of the reindeer who ate the shrooms), sing his songs, play his drum, wear his funny red hat, etc., because they have become imbued with magical energy (mana) through their association with the powerful shaman.

Now here's a very simple experiment. Take a coin, flip it and try to get heads 7 times in a row. That's seven lucky guesses one after another without flaw. Chances are you will fail as your odds are 1 in 128 of pulling that feat off. 

Now take a coffee can and put 128 coins into it.
* Shake it up and dump it out onto the table.
* Discard all the coins that come up tails.
* Put all the coins that came up heads back into the can and repeat.

You will eventually end up with a coin that has managed to be flipped 6-8 times in a row. You can repeat the easily and the chances are very good that you will get a "lucky" coin each time.

This lucky coin is a lot like the shaman or psychic who managed to guess right repeatedly without flaw.  Mere chance leads to this and those who don't understand what is happening will be left to wonder how such incredible feats could ever happen. The "lucky" guesser is free to speculate about their own seemingly magical powers - at least until their statistical streak breaks and they get stoned to death or banished for offending the gods ( or whatever explanation might be concocted. )

[LigH]

Lame joke to be added:

Mommy mommy! I know Santa doesn't exist, I found the red coat in daddy's closet. And there is no Easter bunny, there are egg colors in your kitchen drawer. And I know that babies are born. And I will find the borer too!

[Volki]

You're right. That was pretty lame.