I love the comic Calvin and Hobbes. I’ve been reading it for many years and for the last few years I’ve been getting it delivered via email to my Inbox each day (you can too – see here). Basically, they’re re-running all the strips on the web, albeit 11 years to a day behind the original series (so, today being 23 December 2003, you can read the 23 December 2002 strip on the website).

Over the last week there has been a series about Calvin really wanting more Christmas presents, but really worrying that Santa won’t bring him any because he hasn’t been good enough. While it’s quite amusing to see Calvin wrestle with his conscience, what struck me more is that to Calvin, Santa is like God. Or rather, Calvin?s perception of Santa is like the common perception of God. I?ve posted some of the relevant comics here so you can see what I mean (this will open in a new window): Click Here.

For Calvin, Santa sees everything he does and judges him accordingly. Interestingly, Calvin knows what right behaviour is – he just prefers to misbehave. Calvin is concerned with the prize (Christmas presents) and will try to act like he should to get it, but he’s not prepared to change his underlying thoughts or feelings. This is most evident where Calvin argues that reluctant good acts should still count. I like it that Hobbes nails the issue when he says, “Look, doing ten good acts isn’t going to impress Santa if you do bad things all morning!”

It struck me that Calvin’s perception of Santa is what a lot of people think about God, or at least what a lot of people think that Christians believe about God. In this picture, God is just a moral authority who expects people to do the right thing – and as long as your good things outweigh your bad or as long as you’re at least trying to do the right thing, then God will reward you. It’s funny, because people will immediately see the flaw in Calvin’s reasoning in the cartoon, but they wouldn’t be so quick to see it when it’s presented in real life and applied to a relationship with God.

I wonder why that is? Do people think that God has lower standards than Santa? Maybe they think that God is more forgiving than Santa? It can’t be that think that God is any more or less real than Santa, since most people treat them both as a myth and that you grow out of believing in both of them by about age 10 (at most).

I’m generally quite opposed to the Santa thing. But this makes me wonder if there is a good use for it. Evangelistically, it might be nice to compare the way people think about Santa (judging acts) to how God really is – selflessly giving his Son for our salvation. I’ll have to keep that one in mind for future. On the flipside, the idea of Santa as a tool of moral authority doesn’t leave a good taste in my mouth.

Warning: rant starts here:
I hate the commercialisation of Christmas. I happily engage in the whole Christmas thing with friends and family because I like being able to give gifts to people and do nice things and spend time with people, but if it wasn’t such a cultural norm, I’d probably skip it in favour of ongoing, year-round acts of generosity and a celebration of Easter rather than Christmas (not to mention that Easter falls on roughly the correct days that relate to Christ’s death and resurrection, rather than Christmas Day which bears no relation to the actual date of Christ’s birth). And also, if we give gifts at Christmas time to symbolise God’s gift to us, why can’t we symbolically sacrifice ourselves to each other at Easter time? Maybe I should invent a new expression of this to do at Easter and get it adopted as a cultural norm. I wonder if there is some standards board where you can apply to register new cultural norms? I guess the internet followed by real life is as good a place to start as any.

Any thoughts or comments on this? I like robust discussion, so feel free to post a comment using the form below. It’ll go here on the site and other can respond to you as well and everyone will be happy.
_{(ok, ok – maybe not everyone will be happy, but you might make me happy).}