On Jesus And Santa Claus

I was in the 2nd grade, working on homework at a desk in our den. It must have been close to Christmastime, because my mother was explaining something about Santa Claus to my little sister.
I don't remember my sister's question, but it probably involved the North Pole, elves, reindeer, Rudolph, or (temporal) punishments and rewards for being either naughty or nice. In one blinding moment the Santa Claus/Easter Bunny/Tooth Fairy Axis Of Impossibility revealed itself to me.
There are no elves. Reindeer can't fly. Old fat guys can't get down chimneys. A giant rabbit can't leave us colorful plastic eggs (from Gibson's department store) filled with coins or candy.
Any fairy with a tooth fetish must be very lonely fairy indeed.

I had figured out the conspiracy, and needed some clarification on the finer points so I looked up from my homework and asked "Hey, there can't be a Santa Claus who brings all this stuff. Is it just you and Daddy, or is it somebody else?"

My Mother went through a frantic series of shushing gestures, throat slashings, and brow-furrowings, and then said something like "Of course there's a Santa Claus", followed by a wink-wink nudge-nudge. Once my sister left the room, she explained that Santa Claus was something that parents did to make Christmas more fun for children, along with a follow-up conversation about the need to conceal this from my sisters and brother. I immediately felt like more of an adult since I was in on what was obviously a very adult secret.

I relished the conversations I could have with my parents and other adults about what other kids were getting from Santa Claus. I had access to the people behind the curtain, the ones who made the magic happen.

I had a friend named Glenn Williams who was a year younger than me. (Note to self: write a post about the day Glenn was working at The Rushing Winery and managed to bottle his thumb.) Another friend, Walt Burns, took Glenn aside one day and told him all about Santa Claus. Glenn has told me at least three times about how mad he got at Walt for doing this.

Up until the time Walt spilled the beans, Glenn had a worldview that included a benevolent old guy who paid attention to his behavior and rewarded him with great stuff every December 25th. People were killing each other in Viet Nam but Santa was watching. Elves were making toys for people who were good, even if kids our age were starving in communist China. And Walt Burns had to ruin everything. There was no magic guy in a sleigh.  It was just Pat and Guy B. Williams waiting up past their normal bedtime to bring Glenn's toys down from the attic.

Other kids claimed to believe, or pretended to believe, until they were in the 5th or 6th grade. In their families, once you stopped believing, the quality and quantity of gifts from Santa declined. Why rock the boat?

Flash forward about 15 years.

I briefly attended Southwestern Baptist Theological Cemetery Seminary in Fort Worth. The place seemed to operate on two levels. In some classes the professors spoke as if every word in the Bible was inspired by God, and that all of scripture hung together as a unified statement and plan. But a few other professors would sometimes imply that the book was a mishmash. It was filled with time and place-specific rants that had to be twisted and tortured into relevance. A few brave souls, usually at the doctoral level, would introduce Biblical Criticism into the mix.

No professors publicly confessed any doubts about whether the basic story was true. And by true, I mean in the sense that this event happened, not true in the sense that something is a true to life parable or narrative that can teach us something about blah blah blah....

However, I found that if I could get these professors off the clock, and they would sometimes confirm that doubt was a valid response. Some of them would go so far as to give me further reading on the subject.

But by and large, the main response to doubt went something like this: "These stories have given comfort to millions. They are the foundation of our morality, our ethics, and our hope for the future. They are the received wisdom handed down from previous generations. If they weren't true, would God have given them to us? And one last thing.... people will give 10% or more of their income to spread God's Eternal Truth. But can you imagine anyone giving 10% of his money to spread a story that's just a parable? Churches and ministers that waver in their professed beliefs have a hard time paying the light bill."

In other words, once people start thinking of Santa Claus as a metaphor, you can't rely on them to put out milk and cookies in front of the fireplace.

We now have ministers all over the U.S. who no longer truly believe what they're preaching.  They no longer have a separate "carve-out" for stories about walking on water and resurrections and hells - a separate cubbyhole for the miraculous stories that otherwise would go the way of evles, reindeer and giant magic bunnies.  So why do they continue?

They don't want to be the Walt Burns who tells Glenn Williams what they've learned. They don't want to hurt their colleagues, financially or professionally, who still claim to take it all literally instead of figuratively. In some groups, to go against the story is to go against the entire tribe, and would mean rejecting family, town, denomination, and (ahem) salary. Sometimes it's too late to re-invent yourself as an insurance salesman, retail manager, or freight broker.

Plus, the church still owes $250,000.00 on the new education wing they built 10 years ago, and somebody needs to keep paying retirement funds into the Annuity Fund. 

When I'm feeling particularly dark, I sometimes tell people that I didn't learn the truth about Santa Claus until I spent 6 years training to be an elf.

Could there be anything sadder than a 25-year old who still believed in Santa?

On the other hand, could there be anything sadder than a 50-year old minister who lives on the same planet as theologian/scholars like Marcus Borg and John Spong, but who continues to proclaim the virgin birth, angelic visitations, and the eternal damnation of dead Muslim, Chinese, and Indian teenagers?

Let's make some changes, starting with a few obvious propositions. I don't believe in hell. I don't believe that I'll die and get some wings and a harp either. What happens after we die? I don't know. Neither does anyone else. But we can all agree on what happens to a tree when it dies, can't we? Let's start there.

Here's another one. I don't believe that Jesus got his Mama pregnant with himself.

I don't believe that languages were invented when people got uppity and tried to create a tower that would reach the sky and God felt threatened and punished everybody by giving them different languages. You don't believe that either. I promise, you don't. People... Just... Don't... Believe... That...

So if you're a minister who happens to read this rant, you have the blessing and approval of a lot of people to crawl up into your pulpit Sunday and admit what you don't believe certain things anymore. You're probably a good person with some good ideas. Give your folks something new to think about. The Santa Claus guided by Rudolph/Wise Men guided by the star in the east business - those stories don't work any more.

Sunday morning, tell us what you think will make the world better, without resorting to mythology.

I think you'll feel better afterwards. I feel better just writing all of this.

Merry Christmas !

Richard Dawkins - "The Magic Of Reality"

From Richard Dawkins' new book, The Magic Of Reality.  The book is obviously for children, or possibly for those of us with a religious fundamentalist upbringing who need little reminders from time to time to avoid slipping back into religious tribalism. 
Those are the two reasons why I'll probably buy it. 
Parts of this fable that Dawkins shares in his book might sound familiar.  Names, characters, gods, and incidents are the products of the pre-civilized imagination.  Any resemblance to actual events, characters, gods and incidents, living or dead is entirely coincidental.   

Utnapashtim told Gilgamesh of an occasion, many centuries earlier, when the gods were angry with humankind becase we made so much noise they couldn't sleep. 

The chief god, Enlil, suggested that they should send a great flood to destroy everybody, so the gods could get a good night's rest.  But the water god, Ea, decided to warn Utnapashtim.  Ea told Utnapashtim to tear down his house and build a boat. 

It would have to be a very big boat, because Utnapashtim was to take into it 'the seed of all living creatures'. 

Utnapashtim built the boat just in time, before it rained for six days without stopping.  The flood that followed drowned everybody and everything that was not safely inside the boat.  On the seventh day the wind dropped and the waters grew calm and flat. 

Utnapashtim opened a hatch in the tightly sealed boat and released a dove.  The dove flew away, looking for land, but failed to find any and returned.  Then Utnapashtim released a swallow, but the same thing happened. 

Finally Utnapashtim released a raven.  The raven didn't come back, which suggested to Utnapashtim that there was dry land somewhere and the raven had found it. 

Eventually the boat came to rest on a mountaintop poking out of the water.  Another god, Ishtar, created the first rainbow, as a token of the gods' promise to send no more terrible floods. 

So that is how the rainbow came into being, according to the ancient legend of the Sumerians..... In fact, it is obvious that the Jewish story of Noah is nothing more than a retelling of the older legend of Utnapashtim.  It was a folk tale that got passed around, and it travelled down the centuries.  We often find that seemingly ancient legends have come from even older legends, usually with some names or other details changed. 

Go here to read a story about a Dutch Creationist who built a full-size "replica" of the ark from the Noah story.  
Go here to read what percentage of Americans believe that this story is literally true.  (Noah's, but not Utnapashtim's.)

The pics of Utnapashtim came from here and here and here and here and here. 

Archie Manning, Drew Mississippi, and "The Ballad Of Archie Who"

You may have heard of Peyton Manning, The Indianapolis Colts QB who led his team to a Super Bowl win in 2007. 
You may have heard of his little brother Eli, who did the same for the New York Giants. 

Enough about them. 

Back in 1970, it was all about their father, Archie Manning.  Archie is THE favorite son of Drew, Mississippi.  According to Time magazine, Drew had a population of 2,143 people at the height of Archie Fever.  We lived between Drew and Merigold, but Drew was where I went to school, where we went to church, and where almost all of my friends lived.  My father had been friends with Archie's father.  Archie's mother did work for our attorney. 
Drew Mississippi children were told that they had to eat their spinach if they wanted to grow up to be big and strong like Archie. 

(Just for the record, Drew's other favorite sons are "Pop" Staples, who went on to form The Staple Singers, and Tommy Johnson, who wrote the old blues classic "Canned Heat Blues".)

Here's Time magazine, from way back in 1970, talking about some of the Heisman Trophy hopefuls of that year:

....In Mississippi, the entire state is in the throes of "Archie fever." The town council of Drew (pop. 2,143) has erected highway signs proudly proclaiming: HOME OF ARCHIE MANNING OF THE OLE MISS REBELS. To accommodate national TV coverage for Archie, the state legislature spent $150,000 to improve the lighting in the Memorial Stadium in Jackson, while at the University of Mississippi's Hemingway Stadium they only half-jokingly call the new artificial turf the "Archie Manning Memorial Carpet." Beyond that, there are buttons (ARCHIE FOR HEISMAN TROPHY), bumper stickers (ARCHIE'S ARMY), Archie handbills, Archie posters, Archie dolls, Archie T shirts and an Archie campaign song that has sold more than 50,000 copies. Sung by the Rebel Rousers on the Hoddy Toddy label, The Ballad of Archie Who is a twangy tribute to "the best dadburned quarterback to ever play the game":

The ball is on the fifty,
The down is third and ten,
He runs it down the sidelines;
Yes, Archie takes it in.

Until he injured his left wrist last week, Manning had as good a claim to the trophy as anyone in college football. He became known as Heismanning last season when he passed for nine touchdowns and ran for 14 more to pile up a remarkable 2,264 yds. in total offense. So far this season, he has tossed eleven touchdown passes in six games. A roll-out passer who likes to look in one direction and throw in another, the 6-ft, 3½-in., 205-lb. Manning has the size to uncork the long bomb —or fake it and go powering down the sidelines. A freckle-faced country boy, he looks a bit like Huck Finn in hip pads—and talks like him too. When asked about Archie fever, he says, "The only thing I can figure out is that Archie is a different name. Maybe if it were Bill or something, none of this would have started." Not a chance.

I don't remember the exact reason for the "Archie Who?" references.  I think an opposing coach was asked how he thought "Archie" would do against his team, and the coach answered with a flippant "Archie Who?" 

Manning went on to beat the snot out of that coach's team, and a nickname was born.  We had "Archie Who?" bumperstickers and buttons and banners.  We had "Archie Manning Day" in Drew.  We gave him a parade.  I think we gave him a convertible.  It was a big, big deal. 

Here's the "Archie Who?" song, which has finally made it onto YouTube:



According to Drew Mississippi Mythology, Archie Manning didn't miss a Sunday at Drew Baptist Church a single time, from the day he entered the nursery until the day he left for Ole Miss. Among Southern Baptists, that gave Archie the same status that Sandy Koufax achieved among the Jews for not pitching on Yom Kippur. Archie was greatness.

Unfortunately, Archie was drafted by a new team.  The New Orleans Saints.  Lord have mercy, they had some bad years.  Archie Manning spent a lot of his career getting sacked. 

Drew Mississippi Mythology says that if Archie had been drafted by The Dallas Cowboys and Roger Staubach had been drafted by the lowly New Orleans Saints, Manning and Staubach would have had reversed careers.  Manning would have gone to all those Super Bowls, and Staubach would have been Jack Youngblood's tackling dummy. 
Deep down in our hearts, we knew it to be true.  Archie was greatness.  If only Archie could have gotten on with The Dallas Cowboys....

About 15 years ago, Roger Staubach's real estate company was trying to work a deal with my old employer, Barnes & Noble.  Some of us got invited to a pre-game party at Mr. Staubach's home, and then got to go to a game in his suite at the old Cowboys stadium. 

During the pregame party, Staubach brought up the names of some of the other quarterbacks of his era, and I HEARD ROGER STAUBACH SAY THIS SENTENCE WITH HIS VERY OWN MOUTH:

"You know, there are a lot of people who think that if Archie and I had been drafted by opposite teams, we would have had opposite careers.  And they might be right."

I heard Roger Staubach say that sentence.  I heard it with my own ears.  I heard him say it.

John Stossel on Myths About Capitalism

If you didn't catch John Stossel last night, there's still time.  Fox Business channel reruns each feature about 4 times.
Last night was about American myths.  Here's Michael Medved on myth #4:

Myth No. 4: The current downturn means the death of capitalism.

"Capitalism is alive and well," Medved said.
"I'm also bugged when people argue that today's problems prove that capitalism "failed." What failed? We had a correction. A bubble popped. But from 1982 to now, the Dow rose from 800 to 11,000. Had it happened without the bubble, we'd say this is one of the great boom periods.
Medved added: "This is one of the biggest lies — the idea that because of capitalism, we're all suffering. ... Poor people in America today, people who are officially in poverty, have a higher standard of living in terms of medical standards, in terms of the chances of going to college, in terms of the way people live, than middle-class people did 30 years ago. It's an extraordinary achievement of technology and of the profit sector."

On a related note, here are some stats from The Austrian Economists site:

% Households with:	Poor 1984	Poor  1994	Poor 2003	Poor 2005	All 1971	All 2005
Washing machine	58.2	71.7	67.0	68.7	71.3	84.0
Clothes dryer	35.6	50.2	58.5	61.2	44.5	81.2
Dishwasher	13.6	19.6	33.9	36.7	18.8	64.0
Refrigerator	95.8	97.9	98.2	98.5	83.3	99.3
Freezer	29.2	28.6	25.4	25.1	32.2	36.6
Stove	95.2	97.7	97.1	97.0	87.0	98.8
Microwave	12.5	60.0	88.7	91.2	1.0	96.4
Color TV	70.3	92.5	96.8	97.4	43.3	98.9
VCR	3.4	59.7	75.4	83.6	0.0	92.2
Personal computer	2.9	7.4	36.0	42.4	0.0	67.1
Telephone	71.0	76.7	87.3	79.8	93.0	90.6
Air conditioner	42.5	49.6	77.7	78.8	31.8	85.7
Cellular Telephone			34.7	48.3	0.0	71.3
One or more cars	64.1	71.8	72.8 (2001)		79.5

Ah, the failures of free market capitalism....
Remember to watch John Stossel.

Blaise Pascal on the mini-series "Lost"

Here's the secret to the mini-series "Lost", compliments of Blaise Pascal (1623-1662):

When I see the blind and wretched state of men, when I survey the whole universe in its deadness, and man left to himself with no light, as though lost in this corner of the universe without knowing who put him there, what he has to do, or what will become of him when he dies, incapable of knowing anything, I am moved to terror, like a man transported in his sleep to some terrifying desert island, who wakes up quite lost, with no means of escape.  Then I marvel that so wretched a state does not drive people to despair.

Quoted in Karen Armstrong's A Short History Of Myth, pg. 127. 
A fresh coat of Whitening to VampE for bringing this to my attention. 

On Santa Claus and Jesus

I was in the 2nd grade, working on homework at a desk in our den. It must have been close to Christmastime, because my mother was explaining something about Santa Claus to my little sister.
I don't remember my sister's question, but it probably involved the North Pole, elves, reindeer, Rudolph, or (temporal) punishments and rewards for being either naughty or nice. In one blinding moment the Santa Claus/Easter Bunny/Tooth Fairy Axis Of Impossibility revealed itself to me.
There are no elves. Reindeer can't fly. Old fat guys can't get down chimneys. A giant rabbit can't leave us colorful plastic eggs (from Gibson's department store) filled with coins or candy.
Any fairy with a tooth fetish must be very lonely fairy indeed.

I had figured out the conspiracy, and needed some clarification on the finer points so I looked up from my homework and asked "Hey, there can't be a Santa Claus who brings all this stuff. Is it just you and Daddy, or is it somebody else?"

My Mother went through a frantic series of shushing gestures, throat slashings, and brow-furrowings, and then said something like "Of course there's a Santa Claus", followed by a wink-wink nudge-nudge. Once my sister left the room, she explained that Santa Claus was something that parents did to make Christmas more fun for children, along with a follow-up conversation about the need to conceal this from my sisters and brother. I immediately felt like more of an adult since I was in on what was obviously a very adult secret.

I relished the conversations I could have with my parents and other adults about what other kids were getting from Santa Claus. I had access to the people behind the curtain, the ones who made the magic happen.

I had a friend named Glenn Williams who was a year younger than me. (Note to self: write a post about the day Glenn was working at The Rushing Winery and managed to bottle his thumb.) Another friend, Walt Burns, took Glenn aside one day and told him all about Santa Claus. Glenn has told me at least three times about how mad he got at Walt for doing this.

Up until the time Walt spilled the beans, Glenn had a worldview that included a benevolent old guy who paid attention to his behavior and rewarded him with great stuff every December 25th. People were killing each other in Viet Nam but Santa was watching. Elves were making toys for people who were good, even if kids our age were starving in communist China. And Walt Burns had to ruin everything. There was no magic guy in a sleigh, it was just Pat and Guy B. Williams waiting up past their normal bedtime to bring Glenn's toys down from the attic.
Other kids claimed to believe, or pretended to believe, until they were in the 5th or 6th grade. In their families, once you stopped believing, the quality and quantity of gifts from Santa declined. Why rock the boat?

Flash forward about 15 years.

I briefly attended Southwestern Baptist Theological Cemetery Seminary in Fort Worth. The place seemed to operate on two levels. In some classes the professors spoke as if every word in the Bible was inspired by God, and that all of scripture hung together as a unified statement and plan. But a few other professors would sometimes imply that the book was a mishmash. It was filled with time and place-specific rants that had to be twisted and tortured into relevance. A few brave souls, usually at the doctoral level, would introduce Biblical Criticism into the mix.

(Go here for a Dan Dennett video on what happens when seminary students encounter Biblical Criticism for the first time, but find that they've gone too far to change careers. Go here for something I wrote on the subject a while back. If you don't know the competing gospel stories of the resurrection of Jesus, don't bother. You won't get it.)

No professors publicly confessed any doubts about whether the basic story was true. And by true, I mean in the sense that this event happened, not true in the sense that something is a true to life parable or narrative that can teach us something about blah blah blah....

However, I found that if I could get these professors off the clock, and they would sometimes confirm that doubt was a valid response. Some of them would go so far as to give me further reading on the subject.

But by and large, the main response to doubt went something like this: "These stories have given comfort to millions. They are the foundation of our morality, our ethics, and our hope for the future. They are the received wisdom handed down from previous generations. If they weren't true, would God have given them to us? And one last thing.... people will give 10% or more of their income to spread God's Eternal Truth. But can you imagine anyone giving 10% of his money to spread a story that's just a parable? Churches and ministers that waver in their professed beliefs have a hard time paying the light bill."

In other words, once people start thinking of Santa Claus as a metaphor, you can't rely on them to put out milk and cookies in front of the fireplace.

Go back to the Dennett video above. We now have ministers all over the U.S. who no longer truly believe what they're preaching. So why do they continue?

They don't want to be the Walt Burns who tells Glenn Williams what they've learned. They don't want to hurt their colleagues, financially or professionally, who still claim to take it all literally instead of figuratively. In some groups, to go against the story is to go against the entire tribe, and would mean rejecting family, town, denomination, and (ahem) salary. Sometimes it's too late to re-invent yourself as an insurance salesman, retail manager, or freight broker.

Plus, the church still owes $250,000.00 on the new education wing they built 10 years ago.

When I'm feeling particularly dark, I sometimes tell people that I didn't learn the truth about Santa Claus until I spent 6 years training to be an elf.

Could there be anything sadder than a 25-year old who still believed in Santa?

On the other hand, could there be anything sadder than a 50-year old minister who lives on the same planet as theologian/scholars like Marcus Borg and John Spong, but who continues to proclaim the virgin birth, angelic visitations, and the eternal damnation of dead Muslim teenagers?

Let's make some changes, starting with a few obvious propositions. I don't believe in hell. I don't believe that I'll die and get some wings and a harp either. What happens after we die? I don't know. Neither does anyone else. But we can all agree on what happens to a tree when it dies, can't we? Let's start there.

Here's another one. I don't believe that Jesus got his Mama pregnant with himself.

I don't believe that languages were invented when people got uppity and tried to create a tower that would reach the sky and God felt threatened and punished everybody by giving them different languages. You don't believe that either. I promise, you don't. People... Just... Don't... Believe... That...

So if you're a minister who happens to read this rant, you have the blessing and approval of a lot of people to crawl up into your pulpit Sunday and admit what you don't believe certain things anymore. You're probably a good person with some good ideas. Give your folks something new to think about. The Santa Claus guided by Rudolph/Wise Men guided by the star in the east business - those stories don't work any more.

Sunday morning, tell us what you think will make the world better, without resorting to mythology.

I think you'll feel better afterwards. I feel better just writing all of this.

Merry Christmas !