Santa Claus--Secular or Religious Symbol?

Santa--Secular or Religious Symbol

  • Religious

    Votes: 4 21.1%

  • Secular

    Votes: 15 78.9%
  • Total voters
    19
Status
Not open for further replies.
cental34 said:
This is going to seem a little brash but *deep breath*

I think Santa Claus is a fat old ficticious bastard who's purpose is nothing more than to distract consumers away from the religious aspect of Christmas and focus on consumerism and the fueling of seasonal capitalism.
Click to expand...
Actually, if you read up, Christmas isn't technically christian!

It supposedly marks up the date of Christ's birth. But due to the fact that it took four centuries before it was celebrated, and the fact that it fell on the EXACT day of the winter solstice (Calendar revisions later changed this from the 25th to the 21st), that claim is very suspect. It doesn't help that the Eastern Orthodox church choose january 6 as the day of Christ's birth. Read a bit about the origins of christmas at wikipedia.

The winter solstice was a holy day for many faiths, including the celebrations of Yule, Saturnalia, Yalda, Sol Invictus, and Korochun. Modern Christmas celebrations seem mix characteristics from all of these festivals. Christmas originally seems to have been celebrated in roman times to pre-empt the once popular festivals of Saturnalia and Yalda (mithraism). It since seems to have absorbed Yule customs. Santa Claus, despite the talk about a 'St Nicolas', seems to be most strongly derived from Norse Yule customs. The same is true with yule logs, trees, mistletoe, and many other 'christmas' customs.
 
bree said:
...It supposedly marks up the date of Christ's birth.
Click to expand...

December 25 was not supposed to be the actual date of Jesus' birth. It was an arbitrary date for an annual recognition of His birth. Kind of like the "birthday" for the Queen of England. She has a real birthday every year (the actual date of her birth) but she also has a "royal" birthday every year for public celebration.
 
"And the reason why St. Nicholas is so famous is because
he gave toys and gifts to many people...

He made toys and stuff.

So if you guys do what St. Nicholas did, make toys
for a living and give toys to children and all...

Then you'll be famous forever... Ain't that neat.

Even Saint Valentine was famous for giving candies to people."



Huh? Are you kidding me with this?

St Nicholas didn't "make toys and stuff". St Nicholas was known to give money to the widows and the poor. And St Valentine has nothing to do with giving candy to people.
 
Rose Immortal said:
I wonder if the fact that he doesn't carry a cross in the States is a symptom of how commercialized he's become here? Thoughts?
Click to expand...

Blame CocaCola! Here is a bit history of the famous illustration of Santa Claus:

From http://www.trinicenter.com/TrinidadandTobagoNews/Dec/christmashistory.html
The Commercialization of Santa Claus

The commercialization of red and white American Santa Claus was performed by Coca Cola, a company at the time that was struggling to sell cold drinks in the cold season. The company needed to figure out how to associate their product with the holiday season, and so they turned to, an illustrator named Haddon Sunblum. Sunblum concluded the spirit of the holiday was really Santa Claus, and Santa Claus had this enormous task facing him every Christmas Eve and that was to go around the world, in an evening, distributing, toys to children everywhere and obviously he would, you know, get tired and he would definitely get thirsty and he would need some refreshment, so what better idea than to have Santa pausing in his rounds in various scenes enjoying a nice cold Coca Cola?

Sunblum's Santa Claus really became the American Santa and in real terms the worldly Santa because his characterization of Santa Claus was the one that people embraced. He came into their homes; he became a part of their lives and so, in a very real sense, the imagery created by Sunblum for a commercial product became a part of popular culture.
Click to expand...
 
Reba said:
December 25 was not supposed to be the actual date of Jesus' birth. It was an arbitrary date for an annual recognition of His birth. Kind of like the "birthday" for the Queen of England. She has a real birthday every year (the actual date of her birth) but she also has a "royal" birthday every year for public celebration.
Click to expand...

Fair enough, but that did not address my point of it apparently being chosen to conside with the winter solstice.

I'm not going further argue about the x-mas date. Its just important to note that solstice festivals do have an important role in examining the nature of christmas customs, including santa claus.
 
Oh Please, There is no history documents that verify a "real" Santa Claus, They only made him up because of Nicholas. If there was a "real" Santa Claus where were all my presents since I was growing up? :giggle:
 
Cheri said:
Oh Please, There is no history documents that verify a "real" Santa Claus, They only made him up because of Nicholas. If there was a "real" Santa Claus where were all my presents since I was growing up? :giggle:
Click to expand...

LOL, this reminds me for some reason of a funny story about how I caught "Santa Claus" as a fake. ;)

I think I was 6 or 7, but I had figured out that "Santa Claus" was probably my parents. So what I did was, I figured I'd make "Santa" sign for the delivery like the UPS man. So, along with the milk and cookies, I put out a signature sheet I'd made!

When the sheet came back with "Santa's" signature in my dad's handwriting, the game was up! :giggle:

He didn't even bother to disguise his writing...I guess he figured if I was old enough to come up with that idea, I was old enough to know "Santa" wasn't real. Besides, he knew I'd be OK about it...after all, I had a sense of humor! ;)
 
Rose Immortal said:
LOL, this reminds me for some reason of a funny story about how I caught "Santa Claus" as a fake. ;)

I think I was 6 or 7, but I had figured out that "Santa Claus" was probably my parents. So what I did was, I figured I'd make "Santa" sign for the delivery like the UPS man. So, along with the milk and cookies, I put out a signature sheet I'd made!

When the sheet came back with "Santa's" signature in my dad's handwriting, the game was up! :giggle:

He didn't even bother to disguise his writing...I guess he figured if I was old enough to come up with that idea, I was old enough to know "Santa" wasn't real. Besides, he knew I'd be OK about it...after all, I had a sense of humor! ;)
Click to expand...


LOL! Real cute! How I found out Santa was fake, when it was my house cleaning duty to vacuum the family room I went in the closet I noticed a huge blanket spread on top of something, I pulled the blanket off and noticed all those barbies items. I told my sisters OMG! We got barbies for Christmas but not from Santa but from our parents. On Christmas morning I noticed on the gift tags it says "From Santa" I unwrapped all the gifts, those were the same gifts I saw in the closet, that's how I knew Santa was fake! I even told my parents that I found their hiding spot where the presents were, I said Dad, You shouldn't had let me vacuum before Christmas. :giggle:
 
This reminds me of one of my favorite video clips... South Park: The Spirit of Christmas. On this video clip, Santa was having his usual visit from kids of South Park. Suddenly, Jesus came in and demanded that Santa stop what he was doing for Jesus was the person who invented Christmas. Santa said that he was the one that invented Christmas. Suddenly, they both stood up face to face... and Santa said, "There can only be one!" Suddenly, they're fighting Street Fighter style! Hehehe!

Of course, Kenny got killed in the process. "OMG! They killed Kenny!" "You bastards!"
 
Santa Claus = Satan Clause (Satan's clause)

They both wore red (devilish color).

hmm...

I answered poll's question... secular.
 
Santa Clause was known as St. Nicolas a long time ago and was always helping people especially with poor people and I can tell that he was a wonderful heart. And yes today, I believe in him because his spirit is real to me. :)
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Back
Top