Santa or Scrooge

Christmas is a time that we remember the most important birth in History. We remember Jesus, the son of Mary, because he is the saviour of the world. His birth represents God’s mercy towards the world and His offer of peace, Love and hope to the faithful.

Christmas has taken on a life of its own. You don’t have to be a Christian to celebrate it and, thanks to its commercial success, you can celebrate it every year and never know that it has anything to do with the homeless Jewish child.

But the ideals of Peace, Love and Hope still prevail. Watch the Christmas specials and read the Christmas stories: whether they are about altruistic things like self discovery, or the discovery of the real meaning of life and Christmas, or just fun stories about a Reindeer whose nose glows, these ideals continue.

So tonight, I want to look at two of the most prevalent Christmas characters to point you to the most important one: Jesus.

Those two characters are Santa Claus and Scrooge.

First Scrooge:

Scrooge, you will remember was an angry man- he hated Christmas because he hated the ideals that it promoted: Peace, Love, Charity, forgiveness of debt and so on.

Scrooge once said, " . . . every idiot who goes about with 'Merry Christmas' on his lips, should be boiled with his own pudding, and buried with a stake of holly through his heart."

Scrooge has become synonymous with someone who is greedy, self-centered, emptied of charity and love. In short, he is the epitome of everyone who hates Christmas.

Then there is Santa Claus. I struggle with Santa, because in a lot of ways he represents the materialism that has come to replace the spirituality of Christmas. I struggle with letting my children know about him because one day they will come to learn the truth and wonder what else I deceived them about.

Santa has become god-like, in our pop-culture: he can see everyone, he can be everywhere, he has unlimited resources and can work miracles. I think he represents our secular culture’s secret yearning for a benevolent God.

But we don’t have to be a scrooge when it comes to Santa Claus. Santa was a real person, he lived long ago.

His real name was Nicholas; he is one of the most popular saints in the Greek and Roman churches. Nicholas was the bishop of Myra in eastern Turkey in the 4th century.

Although he was born to a wealthy family, Nicholas renounced his material wealth- he gave it to the poor and joined the priesthood. One of the most famous legends about Nicholas is that he once threw gold through the window of three young orphan girls who were going to be sold into prostitution.

For a time, Nicholas was placed in prison by the Roman emperor Diocletian because the Emperor hated the church. But he was released when Constantine became emperor.

Nicholas was also present at the most famous church council in history, the council of Nicea, which affirmed the divinity of Christ, the teachings of Apostles and the New Testament.

Nicholas became famous throughout Christian Europe for his generosity to the poor. Eventually, the exchange of gifts in commemoration of Nicholas became a yearly celebration on December 6th, which came to be known as Saint Nicholas’ day. St Nicholas day was later merged with the advent celebration of the birth of Jesus during the winter solstice and that is why we exchange gifts on Christmas day.

So, the truth is that Santa Claus is not a usurper but a compliment to the real meaning of Christmas. He is not Satans Claws, but the benevolent Christian Bishop of Myra who cared for children and gave his wealth to help them.

I want to ask you to make a choice tonight. I want to ask you to identify with one of these men: scrooge, the greedy, black hearted materialist, or Santa Claus, the generous, loving follower of Jesus Christ.

I doubt that there is anyone who would choose the former and even if you do, remember that Scrooge also changed. It was once said of Scrooge that “he knew how to keep Christmas well”. In fact, “He became as good a friend, as good a master, and as good a man, as the good old city knew, or any other good old city, town, or borough, in the good old world.” The love of Jesus can do that to anyone.

So I want us to signify our choice to love and to be generous in keeping with this season, by taking our candles and coming forward to light them to signify that the light of Jesus’ love has come into the world and is alive today and that we want to bear the light of that love and spread it to our families and friends this Christmas.