HELLo Santa

As much as I love Christmas, I’m not a huge fan of Santa – not that I’m a Jesus freak, mind you, it’s just that when it comes to decorating and whatnot, you’ll find more pop culture items (Rudolph, Charlie Brown, A Christmas Story, etc.)  around my house than Santa stuff.  

It probably stems from my childhood, when my neighbor, and future sister-in-law, Kelly, had these horribly scary Santa faces hanging in her house. The picture below hardly does them justice, but believe me, they were terrifying.

Speaking of pictures, hang out at the mall for an hour and watch kids reactions to Santa. My theory is the ones who take to him immedietly and have no problem sitting and smiling on his lap are most likely evil, while the ones who are afraid, like my angel Eli, are the good kids.  I have no proof of this, but it makes sense to me.

Me and Eli on the front page of the Huntington Herald

Especially when you consider that when you move the “n” in Santa to the end, you get Satan. It may just be a coincidence, but there’s no denying that they do have many similarities: they both dress in red, they’re both blamed for turning people away from Jesus, and they both like to come down chimneys (only Satan does it just to be gross!) Oh, and they’re both very good at scaring children.

For one month, parents can control their kids with, “Be good, or Santa won’t bring you any presents” and the rest of the year they can rely on saying, “Be good, or Satan will burn you in Hell!”  - the only difference is Santa apparently has a phone, as I’ve never heard a mom threaten to call the devil and let him know little Johnny was being bad.

Now that I think about it, they’re probably in cahoots. All that coal that Santa gives to the bad kids is probably the same coal that Satan will later use to stoke the fires under them. And in return,  Satan gets first rights to the names on Santa’s “Naughty” list to give to his telemarketers (hellamarketers?) for sales leads.

Of course, this blog entry will probably land me on the Naughty list, but I can handle it - I've got Caller ID and registered for the Do Not Call list - and with the cost of oil these days, I could really use the coal.