By Neal Cruz

Can you believe it? A group of German weirdos want to do away with Santa Claus! What a crazy thing to do. What is Christmas without Santa Claus? Along with the Christmas tree and the reindeer, Santa is the most enduring image of Christmas in the world.

But this group of German activists want to replace the much loved, venerable, cherubic, generous and kindly grandfather that all children have come to love with St. Nicholas, a fourth-century bishop in Myra (today’s Turkey). This bishop is an actual historical figure who gave gifts in secrecy, just like Santa. According to Agence France Presse, he was supposed to have saved three girls whose impoverished father wanted to sell them into prostitution. “Nicholas, who had inherited a fortune,” the AFP story goes, “left three lumps of gold over three nights in the room of the three girls while they were sleeping.”

“Catholics and Orthodox Christians in much of the world still celebrate St. Nicholas Day, usually on Dec. 6, as a festival for children who receive chocolates in their shoes when they leave them out overnight,” says AFP.

But St. Nicholas has been upstaged by another grandfatherly figure in a red fur-lined suit, fluffy white beard and big belly ho-ho-ing through the night sky on a sleigh pulled by reindeer. He steals into other people’s homes (just like members of the Akyat Bahay gang) but instead of stealing things, he leaves gifts to the sleeping children. This generous old man is known as Santa Claus. Who would want to erase a lovable man like that?

But the German activists say Santa is a creation of American advertising people and that this gift-giver has reduced the celebration of Christian values “into a decadent and deeply dissatisfying display of greed.” Santa has reduced Christmas to “hollow commercialism,” they say. They want to banish Santa and put old St. Nicholas back on the pedestal. They are distributing child-friendly stickers and have declared “Santa-Free Zones” where Santa is banned and St. Nicholas is back.

What a stupid thing to do. That will make billions of children grow up to adulthood hating St. Nicholas because he replaced the fat man with the rosy cheeks and nose who sailed through the night sky with Rudolph and the other reindeer and left gifts in their socks on Christmas Eve. That will turn off billions of fathers who don red suits and cotton beards when their children are asleep and leave gifts beside them and then wake up very early in the morning to listen to the children find the gifts and their excited exclamations of joy.

Can you imagine the joy in the hearts of parents who listen to their children tell what gifts Santa has left them? Don’t you see their happiness when their children tell them that they caught a glimpse of Santa in their room and even heard sleigh bells and the stomping of reindeer on the roof?

Now these killjoys want to erase all that by making these children and parents believe there really is no Santa. Do they realize what that will do to the economies of the world? All the industries and businesses that depend on Christmas to earn profits will go bankrupt. It is bad enough that we have a world recession now, but they want to make it worse by banishing Santa?

I believe that it is Santa and the Christmas season plus the election season in the next two years that will save the Philippines from a full-blown depression. Economists call it “pump-priming.” You let much money circulate to put money in the pockets of people so that they will have money to buy the products that manufacturers produce.

Without the pump-priming, the economy collapses and everybody suffers. Santa is what primes the pump of Christmas. Abolish Santa and the Christmas merriment and pump-priming collapses.

So live and let live. There is no conflict between Santa and St. Nicholas. Why make them quarrel? Let St. Nicholas have his feast day on Dec. 6, but let Santa be.

The Germans can have St. Nicholas, the Britons and Canadians can have Father Christmas, and the rest of the world can have dear old Santa.

Christmas will never be the same again without Santa—both for children and for parents. Who will the children write to before Christmas? How will parents make them behave without the threat of Santa knowing about their misbehavior and punishing them by not visiting on Christmas Eve? How can mothers invent all those stories about Mrs. Santa Claus and the little elves helping Santa make all those toys in the cottage somewhere in the North Pole?

Even if they are inventions of American ad-men, they were good inventions. I think they are infinitely better inventions than the motor car and nuclear power. They fuel commercialization? So let them. They make the economies prosper. They give people jobs. They make people happy. They make the world go round.

I still remember when our three children were small. We would put our gifts under the Christmas tree on Christmas Eve. The kids had already placed their own gifts to us there by then, and it was fun to shake the gift-wrapped packages and guess what were in them. Early on Christmas morning, the wife and I would be awakened by the sound of little feet rushing down the stairs to the Christmas tree and hear excited cries as they find their gifts. We would also rush down the stairs and sit under the tree with the children, unwrapping the gifts and kissing and thanking one another. Then the wife would serve us hot chocolate and ham sandwiches, and we would all sit there until noon savoring our gifts and one another’s closeness.