BHA: Santa, God, kneeling

[Hans Ehrbar <ehrbar@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

If you reduce Santa to a person who some people think
existed although he never existed, you display
methodological individualism and an amazing and
irresponsible blindness towards the social relations we all
are entangled in.  Santa is real: not because children
believe in him (although many do) but because the story of
Santa is systematically promoted in our society -- I
presume, not in order to satisfy the need of children to
have magic and personalized relations, but mainly in order
to discipline children with carrot and stick and to
socialize them into passive consumers.  Santa has to be seen
as part of our social relations which keep children in
place.  If you are saying Santa is not real but only
children's belief in Santa is real, you are blaming the
victims and you are setting up a framework in which the
pernicious effects which Santa and other terror stories have
on children cannot be seen.  In Germany, Santa is
occasionally pictured carrying a bag with a children's leg
sticking out -- of a child which has not been "good" and
which is taken away by Santa.  If you think I am overstating
here please read the memorable first chapter in Alice
Miller's "Banished Knowledge", Doubleday 1990, the chapter
is called "A St. Nicholas Celebration."  The precise
function of the Santa story, and the precise way it is
reproduced in our society, are subject to sociological
research; but you philosophers here are doing a poor job of
underlaboring since you are so thoroughly mis-identifying
what the reality of Santa Claus consists in.

Hans Ehrbar.



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