What Santa Represents

Posted at The Next Family
by: Danny Thomas

You might say
The spirit of Christmas is naïve…
You might say…
It’s made of dreams
That have no bearing on this corporeal existence
Well…
Let me tell you what Santa represents to me…
I grew up in the Eighties…
I suckled at the teet of corporate Christmas…
At Christmas time
I snuggled with a cuddly Santa
That held a coke in his hand
Smiling!
He was from a display
In the liquor store
Where my father worked.
That,
is a cherished memory.
A Christmas memory.
But,
Santa also represents
The spirit of giving
And receiving.
The sprit of sharing
The spirit of
believing in the best of each other
And of the world.
In. spite. Or maybe
Because of, the worst.
Santa is a pirate, Robin Hood, Highwayman, Jesse James, Johnny Appleseed…with all the trouble washed away…
A Populist, Humanist, Faithist, magical representations of the power of giving…
And what does Santa receive?
Well…cookies, milk, what must be one hell of a rock-n-roll sleigh ride…
And the joy of giving…
The joy of being believed in!
The joy of human kindness.
The spirit of light in the darkness
Winter is spare times
And harvest times are done
All we have
all we can do
Is wait and see
what our seeds become…
And all we can do is wait
And tend our seeds with care
Santa represents the idea that giving and receiving are the same.
That sometimes the best gift you can receive is the opportunity to give one.
Give up
Give in
Give out
Sometimes the hardest time to give
Is when you feel you have nothing left to give
That is what Santa represents.
And that is sometimes the hardest time to receive a gift too…
Because you can’t see
Yourself as worthy
Of the gift
Because you’ve closed yourself off
With guilt
And anger
And through your own shame
Or sadness
You can’t see
What is being offered to you…
Let’s remember to receive what is all around us this Christmas
And embrace it with
Open arms
And hearts.