In Defense of Santa

Obviously Santa Claus isn't real, yet you'd be very hard pressed to actually prove that to the satisfaction of everyone else on this planet. So arguing against that rather non-provable proof, just for the sake of argument...

Santa is real. You can post actual physical letters in actual physical mailboxes to Santa himself. You can't write and post letters to mythical persons.

We've all seen pictures of Santa holding a bottle of Coca-Cola and since Coca-Cola is certainly real, well Santa must be real too by association.

There are millions of photographs of Santa with (for example) children sitting in his lap and dozens of movies starring Santa. "Photography is truth. Cinema is truth at twenty-four times per second" (Jean-Luc Godard).

Santa has an established historical record going back many centuries. I've even seen a non-fictional biography of Santa in the bookstores.

Ask your typical WASP 5-year-old, or for that matter nearly any 5-year-old if Santa is real. You know the answer you'll get, and parents will reinforce the child's answer. I mean on Xmas Day kids will find presents under the Xmas tree with Santa's name on the gift tag. What more proof do you need to establish Santa's bona-fides?

There are millions of Xmas cards with images of Santa on them. You can buy all manner of sorts of Xmas kitsch with Santa's image on them; even Santa masks for use on Halloween.

You can see Santa standing on the street corners collecting for charities. You can meet and greet Santa in the lead up to Xmas in department stores and in shopping malls. Santa answers to the name "Santa" and there are signage posts pointing the way to Santa.

But how you ask, can Santa possibly do what Santa does on Xmas Eve? Isn't that physically impossible? No, all things are possible in the realm of the supernatural and Santa is surely a supernatural being who is all-powerful and can invoke MAGIC to accomplish his Xmas Eve feats.

Further, Santa is surely all-knowing too. That’s because he keeps a list and checks it twice so he knows if you've been naughty or nice - so be good for goodness sake!

And finally, Santa, by all accounts, is way, way, way more omni-benevolent, all-loving, all-just, and all-merciful than any god, specifically God. If you're a 5-year-old, what's God done for you lately? Finally, I've never heard it said that Santa condones stoning children to death or letting loose bears on them.