It is no doubt mere coincidence that the letters which make up Santa need only a slight
rearrangement to form Satan. Both are mythical figures, occupying two ends
of a spectrum. The first personifies a comforting goodness, generosity, good
fortune, gifts given freely. Belief in Santa’s actual existence is possible
only for the first few years of childhood, although his spirit lives on for
adults. The second personifies evil and malevolence imagined to be working
in the world, a threat not only to one’s moral health during life but one’s
fate in a next one.
Unfortunately, belief in
Satan is possible even to adults, since fear and guilt are more powerful
instruments of indoctrination than concepts of goodness, and more useful to
the needs of religion. Satan and other personifications of malevolence which
humanity has long invented for itself are necessary to explain why evil
exists in a world supposedly created and run by a benevolent Deity. Without
Satans, Gods could not hope to find acceptance. Santa, on the other hand, is
symbolic of the good Deity working on earth. He is immortal, selfless and
caring, though he requires good behavior on the part of those who expect to
receive his benefits.
Both Santa and Satan are
sacred cows not easily dislodged from our cultural psyches. It is sometimes
said that one of the great sins against children is to reveal, before they
are ready, the fact that there is no Santa Claus, though they can usually be
led to accept it by having the revelation of the truth associated with their
own growing maturity. Satan is more tenacious. He serves not only as a
figurehead under which evil can be categorized, he provides a handy
reason—even an excuse—for why humans fall into their evil ways. He is the
great Antagonist, keeping the believer focused, to the benefit of
institutional religion, on the perpetual fight against evil and temptation,
internal and external.
Losing Santa means a loss
of childhood innocence and a bit of magic. Losing Satan, on the other hand,
would be a net gain: freedom from an oppressive paranoia in fearing that an
inimical force is ‘out to get you’; freedom from an obsession with sin and
guilt, and the spectre of a horrific eternal damnation. For traditional
western religion, loss of Hell would mean a loss of Heaven, as the two go
hand in hand. For purposes of inducing required moral behavior, the vague
promises of a Heaven which seems to entail little more than spending
eternity praising God lacks the persuasive punch of an eternity of
unspeakable torment.
Of course, the greatest
sacred cow of them all is the figure of Jesus the Son. He is Santa and Satan
rolled into one: bringer of the gift of salvation—provided you’ve been a
good child—but willing to turn you over to the very un-tender mercies of his
infernal alter ego (both began as basically angelic beings) if he thinks
you’ve failed to respond to him and his great sacrifice. Yet Jesus, too, is
a mythical figure, a cog in the heavenly wheel running religion’s convoluted
machinery of God and Satan, Father and Son, Heaven and Hell, angels and
devils, sin and virtue, sacrifice and salvation, the Rapture and the Second
Coming, the whole crazy business that drives too many to distraction and
makes this great but challenging world a lot more difficult than it need
be—and a lot more disparaged and neglected.
Usually when
a key cog is removed in a complex machine the whole thing grinds to a halt.
In Christianity’s machinery, the removal of the Gospel Jesus as an
historical person should bring two millennia of superstitious nonsense, with
its incalculable damage to the world’s history and psyche, to an end. My own
books and website are a culmination of over two centuries of clear-eyed
scholarship that, with confessional interests set aside, has concluded
without any reasonable doubt that the Jesus of the Gospels is a fictitious
and symbolic character who never actually lived. May I
commend to the reader the latest fruits of almost three decades’ labor,
Jesus: Neither God Nor Man, an 800-page presentation of the case for a
Mythical Jesus. See newadvert.htm.
Earl Doherty
