PHGentleman007
Forum Expert
Everybody who isnāt completely dead from the neck up realizes that a red-suited, white-bearded fat man saying āHo ho ho,ā has absolutely nothing to do with celebrating the birth of the Christ.
It is so brain-dead obvious, in fact, that you seem like a Scrooge for even pointing it out. Why spoil everyoneās fun?
Should you care? Does Christ care? Even the āLetās put Christ back into Christmasā folks arenāt calling for a ban on Santa, are they? Their message seems to be more about performing charitable works at Christmastime instead of simply perpetuating materialism.
Should Santa be avoided by Christians?
One meme that floats around the internet claims that āSantaā is simply an anagram for āSatan.ā I used to think that was a stretch... just because 'santa' and 'satan' have the same letters, that's a coincidence, isnāt it? Thatās as weird as twisting āSt. Nickā into 'Old Nick' ā British slang for Satan. (Remember the movie Little Nicky about Satanās son?) Canāt be a connection, can there?
Now, I'm not so sure. "Santa" is an American word. It seems to have been made up by Clement Clarke Moore, who wrote the poem we know as 'The night before Christmas' in the early 1800s. He made up 'Santa Claus' out of the Dutch 'sinterklaasā ā Saint Nicholas. New York at that time, aka New Amsterdam, still had a significant Dutch population during his life.
But how did Moore arrive at 'Santa'? Moore was an American professor of Oriental and Greek Literature, as well as Divinity and Biblical Learning, at the General Theological Seminary of the Protestant Episcopal Church, in New York City. āOriental literature,ā in this context refers to the Hebrew Scriptures. Hebrew doesnāt have a word that sounds anything like āsanta.ā The closest it comes is sha`atah, which Strongās dictionary defines as āfeminine, from an unused root meaning to stamp; a clatter (of hoofs):--stamping. (Only at Jeremiah 47:3)ā If youāre curious, Jeremiah 47:3 reads, āAt the noise of the stamping of the hoofs of his stallions, at the rushing of his chariots, at the rumbling of their wheels, the fathers look not back to their children.ā If you know the poem, you know Moore was familiar with that verse. So maybe it isnāt a stretch at all that he could have been thinking of the Hebrew word āshaāatahā when he invented Santa.
And it is not a stretch at all that he may have mushed that Hebrew word with one of the Latin words related to holy, āSancta,ā as in āsancta sanctorum,ā holy of holies.
While Satanists do enjoy tweaking peopleās noses with anagrams such as Santa/Satan, there is no evidence that Moore was a Satanist. He simply made up a word, drawing from the Dutch idea and the sound of āSinterklaas.ā
But what was the Dutch idea of Sinterklaas?
They celebrated Saint Nicholasā day on December 6. That celebration had nothing to do with Christmas. Nicholas had a sidekick, a horned, hairy goat-shaped character called Krampus. In other parts of Europe he was called āBlack Pete.ā Children were told they would be judged by the pair. If they were good, Nicholas would give them coins or candy. If they were judged as naughty, Krampus or Black Pete would beat them with a bundle of birch switches. If they were really bad, Krampus would throw them in his bag and take them back to hell. Thatās right: Krampus was a demon. (Pete was simply a moor ā an African Muslim. His threat was to take kids back to Africa.)
What was Moore thinking, calling Santa a ājolly old elfā?
Martin Luther condemned the celebration of St. Nicholasā day. After all, the belief was based on a legend, with little proof, of a charitable bishop of Myra of the 4th century, who was canonized by the Roman Catholic Church. (As Martin Luther knew, a lot of the Churchās āsaintsā were never real or, if based on a real person, were grossly embellished.)
According to Greek legend, at the Council of Nicaea in 325, when Arius got up to try explain to the assembled bishops what the Bible says about Jesus ā that he was created, that he had a beginning, that he was āthe son of Godā not āGod the son,ā bishop Nicholas slugged him in the face. Sure, letās set him up as the arbiter of whoās naughty and whoās nice. According to the official Catholic creed, however, Nicholas wasnāt there.
Martin Luther realized that removing a pagan celebration and asking people to change their thinking to (gasp!) the truth, was a bridge too far. So as churches everywhere have always done, he instead transmogrified St. Nicholasā day into a celebration revolving around Kris Kringle. Kris Kringle is simply a mangled form of the old German āKrist kindleā ā Christ child. People wouldnāt sit still for it, and in no time, Kris Kringle and Santa Claus became one and the same. It took only a couple hundred years for the Christ child to become a red-suited jolly elf. The goat-shaped demon sidekick was kicked to the side, although heās still popular in Europe.
But even the Sinterklaas legend isnāt really based on the quasi-true stories of the perhaps real Nicholas of Myra. Long before Christianity began to be preached in Northern Europe the people there worshipped Odin or Woden. (If you think youāve never heard of him, Wednesday started out as Wodenās Day.) Guess how Odin was depicted? Long white beard, red cape, flying horse, delivering gifts to nice children in December.
If someone asked you to worship Baal, Molech or one of the other pagan gods listed in the Bible, no doubt you would refuse, right? And you would never worship Satan, would you?
If Satan took one of the old pagan gods you rejected, dressed him up in a red suit, white beard, big smile, twinkly eyes ā are you still going to reject him?
Who could possibly have arranged a celebration that encourages your kids to direct their petitions to Santa instead of to God? Call the Santa hotline, write Santa a letter? Put out food and drink offerings for him?
Could it be, possibly, in the words of the Church Lady, āSATAN?ā