It’s Christmas and for many people, faith comes into focus this time of the year. Christmas has been a secular thing for me for the past decade and a half. I was raised with specific religious beliefs, the sort of gift that didn’t keep on giving because it was what it was. There was no wonder, no mystery, no incentive for the awe one expects when considering the divine. It was believe this One Thing or else. No wonder I turned to nothing in my adult life.
But like Jonah, no matter how much I run away, what and who I am is always with me. Unlike how I was taught the story of Jonah – a fear-based warning that if you didn’t follow God’s will (which inevitably came to be defined by the church, rather than by God or the Bible), God would punish you in some heinous, sadistic way (seriously, what kind of God makes a leviathan eat you?) – my “coming back to God” moment didn’t involve a massive sea creature puking me up on the shore. In fact, it’s been quite wonderful.
Before I explain further, let me say that I haven’t come back to God. My thoughts on God have changed dramatically, so there’s nothing to come back to. But for the longest time, I simply said No. Not in an atheistic sort of way, but just no. I didn’t consider it. I didn’t entertain it. I simply ignored it because of the extent of the beliefs I’d inherited and their tangents upon tangents that I had to de-root and sort through. Now that that fearful and dirty work is over, I must rebuild.
I have to give credit to my son. Or at least to his existence. He is almost six years old now. Watching him grow up has given me opportunities I didn’t have as a child (Santa and Halloween) and opportunities to revisit some of my childhood things. It’s not that I was taught there was no Santa, it’s just that Santa wasn’t emphasized. I was raised in a literal interpretation of the Bible so in that perspective there’s not much room for imagination. What saddens me possibly the most is that: that my childhood was robbed of some of that imagination. Because belief is imagination.
I’m thirty-eight years old and I believe in Santa Claus.
I know Santa does not exist. I know there’s no magical lair at the North Pole. I know there’s no elves, flying reindeer, or an impossible mission on Christmas Eve to visit every child’s home. But I still believe.
I believe in the hope of Santa, that there’s some benevolent being out there who wants everyone to be happy. He wants everyone to be good, but not in a throw-you-in-hell kind of way. He threatens coal, but you’re not going to get coal. Humans need the carrot and the cudgel, but Santa is that right mix of expectation. The be-good-or-else idea that’s present in religion and Santa is an acknowledgement of man’s fallen state but also a belief in his higher state. I like to think that Santa checks his list, but only because he’s so happy to be able to give to so many deserving people. I believe in the spirit of Santa. I believe in that spirit that turns the world into a child’s wonderland every December. All that effort isn’t just for the kids. It’s adults filled with wonder and love. It’s everything that we’re good at and hope we can be. That’s Christmas. That’s Santa.
So what if I saw Jesus that way? What if I saw God that way?
I want to. I really do. But I can’t. That vision is just too clouded by what others have done with and in Jesus’s name.
I know I shouldn’t let what others do ruin what I like about something. But I learned one way early on, in my formative years. So what formed in me has turned to bone now. It’s there even if I wanted to tear it from my flesh. I think to myself that if I can enjoy Santa and the Christmas spirit despite the gross consumerism then why can’t I enjoy Jesus despite the literalists?
I know the answer to that question, but that answer isn’t the point. The point is wonder, imagination, and accepting that there’s great beauty in this world, even if there are flaws in the story and in those who tell it.
Bellicose Blatherings 
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