All over the world people are turning against Santa Claus, or more properly his American incarnation. Activists are accusing him of close ties with multi-national corporations, commercialisation of Christmas and god knows what else. Keep your dirty hands and tongues off my Santa Claus!

Forty years ago it was the angels to bring Christmas presents to my dad. That was a tradition to believe in – and he did believe, very much. On the other hand it was Santa Claus to bring pre-sents to my mum. Santa Claus was also giving presents to me and he will be bringing them to my children as well.

Commercial Saint
Rumour has it that the American (and nowadays pretty much univer-sal) Santa Claus was invented for an advertisement of Coca Cola in the 1930?s. Rubbish! Actually there are two Santa Clauses. One of them is Nicholas, the Greek Or-thodox bishop of Myra in Asia Minor. He was supposed to give gold to the poor children in 4th century AD. But the other Santa Claus has long life story as well. In England, Father Christmas was somewhat of a symbol of good Christmas spirit at least since 17th century. Although the old man did not bring presents to anyone, he had a more difficult task to achieve. He defended the Christ-mas against the Puritans, who wanted to ban Christmas alto-gether. Oh, by the way, Father Christmas wore furred gown and a cap. Sounds familiar?

Santa

Even older is Dutch Sinterklaas, who used to bring presents to chil-dren every year since at least 16th century. His Dutch name is the basis for the North American fig-ure of Santa Claus. While directly related to Saint Nicholas the bishop, he also has some connec-tions to the Germanic god Odin. This god of war, poetry, good winds and wisdom used to fly above the Norse and German set-tlements on winter nights. If the kids had left some candies next to the chimney for his flying horse Sleipnir, they could have expected him to leave some presents in ex-change. Yup, the Santa used to bring gifts and happiness to the kids long before he appeared in mid-19th century advertisements for the first time (long before Coca Cola was even invented). And the presents were never free of charge, the children had to pay for them with forage or good behaviour.

Nowadays many of organizations want to remove Santa Claus from supermarkets, schools or kinder-gartens. This historical Nicholas from Myra is, according to them, the real one, a symbol of love and justice. At the same time the only purpose of the American one, they say, is to increase the profits of shopping malls. It is said that over a million Germans are al-ready supporting the Weihnachts-mannfreie Zone action (Santa Claus-free Zone) and believe the Santa is a symbol of commercialism. Simi-lar campaigns are being organised in Switzerland, Denmark, France, Italy and countries of Latin Amer-ica. They do not want to wait for the Santa to visit them ? fine with me. But banning him from visiting kids is a completely different mat-ter. Besides, if Agios Nikolaos replaces Santa, would parents spend less money on presents?

Not so humble Santa
The Santa I believe in is somehow similar to me. He is overweight, eats unhealthy food. On Christmas Eve he delivers the presents, for the rest of the year he works in the media & marketing industry. No problem with that, a plethora of great actors work in commercials as well. He is a chain pipe smoker. He does not excuse bad kids by politically-correct rubbish, he just brings them a lump of coal or a cane. Sure, the presents from him are not cheap, but nothing is free these days. Instead of jogging or nordic walk-ing, or whatever is trendy at the mo-ment he puts his fat ass to the sleds drawn by Rudolf the red-nose rein-deer (Humane Society anyone?). He does not avoid shopping malls, but do not tell me you do not go there as well. In Polish language there is no way to differentiate between saint Nicholas the bishop, and the guy in red hat. Polish Wikipedia calls the latter ?Saint Nicholas (pop culture). So what, this is also my culture.

My grandfather used to say that every-thing is for people, but not everything is for everyone. For some the best Saint Nicholas is actually Santa Claus, but for others the best one is bishop of Myra, patron saint of pawn shops. The earlier wears a silly red gown and a pom-pon cap, the other wears a pur-ple mitre and a crosier. Both of them are real (?yes, Virginia), there are kids out there waiting for both of them. I am waiting for the one from Coca Cola commercials. Any problems with that?

-transl. by Anna Kiedrzyńska and yours truly