Richard Lloyd Jones: One is kindly and bearded and knowing of your behavior for the whole year. He's also present in the minds of millions of young ones by the time December rolls around. The other is the definition of kindly. He's also bearded and all-knowing. But here the comparison ends, because unfortunately for our souls, we don't remember Jesus all that well. Today on Thinking with Somebody Else's Head, the true father of Christmas.
I'm Richard Lloyd Jones. Like many born in Christian countries, perhaps, I grew up with a clear knowledge of the Nativity story. I played the black wise man in my Sunday school's presentation many years ago where we used black shoe polish to tint my lily-white skin. It was an unremarkable production, probably, that nobody but me and the odd other participant even remembers. But it was highly significant, nonetheless, because it was a version of a story that was being rehearsed and presented in churches large and small and around the same time all around the world.
We were remembering, in our humble ways, the true reason for Christmas. And that made it beautiful. I don't even know if they still go to all that trouble in St. Peter's Anglican Church in my hometown of Victoria, but I hope they haven't given in to the politically correct mania of excising all the Christian customs in an attempt to make people from other cultures feel more at home.
It is, after all, our customs that make us unique from other cultures, right? If I'm traveling in Europe, I'm not there to experience Canadian ways of life, after all. The ideal is cultural diversity, not cultural homogenization. Like I never understood all those British tourists going to the south of Spain and requesting egg and chips. But this I'm talking about speaks actually to a bigger point.
For it's not the customs only that are in peril, it's Christmas itself, or at least the true Christmas, for the frantic, stressed, commercial one with no parking continues unabated.
So let's try to explore the real Christmas spirit today, and remember, if we still can, what the man whose birthday we celebrate at this time was trying to teach us. And at a time in our history where our latest Nobel Peace Prize winner brazenly prepares us to accept war by stating that we would not see an end to violent conflict in our lifetimes, and that he was unable to be guided by the powerful and peaceful examples of Martin Luther King and Gandhi, we can do no better than to call on the example of the greatest of beings, Jesus Christ.
Today, musician and fellow teacher and researcher at the International Society of Analytical Trilogy, Gilbert Gambucci and I will try to remember the true father of Christmas. You know, as we come into the Christmas time, Gilbert, we have the same battle every year, you know, the battle between how to be more spiritual.
Is it a religious time? Is it a commercial time? You know, this has been going on since I was a kid anyway. I remember that. And some people, they actually want to check out of Christmas and say, oh, it's too commercial, it's nothing to do with the real spirit of Christmas. And I was looking at this, Gilbert, I didn't realize this, but it's actually a movement called Christian materialism.
There's an actual definition of this. They say it's the combination of theology, concepts, and holy writings of Christianity with the philosophy of materialism. And this began to sort of emerge at the time when these evangelical ministries were trying to combine religion with capitalist marketing to get more people into their church and obviously to make more money. So it's actually Christianity, spirituality, and materialism are uncomfortable bed partners for some time.
So the origin seems to be like an old one in the Protestant religion anyway.
Gilbert Gambucci: Yes, do you remember just recently, Rich, a good friend of ours came up and she was telling us a story of a young person who came up to her and said, "you know, I just found out that the birthday of Christ, it's the 25th. It's the same day as Christmas." You know, obviously with the whole idea of Santa Claus, that Christmas is Santa Claus and everything that's around that.
So I've been making a study of this whole idea of Santa Claus. Where did that come from? Because he's replacing the celebration of Christ. Well, has replaced. And it's getting every year even more and more so. And so I found an interesting comparison between Jesus Christ and Santa Claus. And the origin of this study I've taken is the Good News letter. Apparently they are former Catholics and they just made a biblical study comparing these two personalities because Santa Claus, as we know, it doesn't exist.
He's been marketed and all over the world, like Mickey Mouse. It's a character that was produced and then marketed everywhere. And everyone has taken this idea of Santa Claus. So look, look at this comparison because it's kind of illuminating. Some of these things may seem a little bit superficial, others not. But just to get an idea, for example, in this study, it shows that in Revelations, it refers to Christ as having white hair like wool.
And of course, Santa Claus has the same. In Isaiah, and many places in the scriptures, Christ has a beard, as Santa Claus has a beard. In Isaiah also, Christ comes in red apparel, you know, dressed in red, which is actually the color of the Holy Spirit, if you analyze this further. And of course, Santa Claus is always in red. And in the letters of the apostles, for example, in Luke and in Mark, they mention that the coming of Christ is a mystery.
Nobody knows the hour. And it's the same as Santa Claus. He has this aspect of coming. His coming is a mystery.
Richard: Sometime when you're
Gilbert: asleep, that's all we know, right? Yes, and you know, of course, Christ was a carpenter. Santa Claus is a toy carpenter. There's mention in Matthew that Christ comes as a thief in the night. That's the way it's put.
And of course, Santa Claus, he comes in the night. He just enters your house. Now, look at this. This is like getting a little bit more into it. Christ, of course, is omnipotent. That is to say, he's all-powerful. And Santa Claus has this quality. He's omnipotent. You know, he can deliver all toys all over the world in one night. He has this capacity to do that.
It's interesting that he has this character to him. He's omniscient. Christ is omniscient, of course. He knows all things.
And, you know, Santa Claus has this quality also. "Children are taught that he knows if you're good or bad for the entire year." Christ, of course, is omnipresent. You know, of course, he's everywhere. He just has this capacity of, he's the creator, he's everywhere. And, you know, Santa Claus has this as well. "He knows if you're awake or asleep, he can deliver these toys at any time in one night.
He lives forever." You know, he's everlasting. He's the giver of gifts. You know, Christ is the giver of gifts. We see in Ephesians and other places. And Santa Claus has this same quality. You know, Santa Claus, he sits on the throne as does Christ. And, you know, in Hebrews, for example, it's mentioned, we're told to go to Christ boldly. To the throne of grace with our needs.
You know, and ask Christ for what we need, you know.
And it's kind of interesting how children. You know, Santa Claus, he sits on a throne. And children go up to him. They approach the throne of Santa Claus and ask him boldly for what they want. You know, the parallels are so exact. He tells children to obey parents as Christ does. And in fact, there are some instances where adults were trying to prevent the children from approaching Christ as though they were a disturbance.
And Christ, you know, he would say, no, let the children come. You need to be more like they, like the children. And, of course, Santa Claus bids children to come unto him. It's the way it is.
Richard: So, is it like a plan, Gilbert? Is it like sort of an introduction of something to take away this more Christian aspect to
Gilbert: Christmas?
Richard: He's a kind of replacement, Rich.
And, you know, Santa Claus has nothing
Gilbert: to do with Saint Nicholas.
You know, the second century bishop has no characteristics like Santa Claus. But this connection is made so that people can see him as saint-like. People pray to Santa Claus' children. You know, they ask him in their prayers for the things that they want.
Richard: Write letters to him.
Gilbert: Write letters to him. And in fact, his name, Kris Kringle, means Christ child. And he's the symbol of world peace, this kind of fatherly image of the Christian season.
So there are too many direct matches here to this creation of Santa Claus that it's an accident or a coincidence. We can see that it's planned. And in fact, he's a kind of secular counterfeit to Jesus Christ. Now, the question is this. Who has the, how could I say, the power to implement this character all over the world?
Richard: Are you suggesting that there's a, like some planned, organized movement to introduce this, to diminish the importance of Jesus at Christmastime?
Gilbert: Yes, we see that he's been marketed all over the world. And Rich, you know, you and I, We live in Brazil, and it's more obvious here where Santa Claus is in this Santa suit. And here in the tropical weather, you know, in 95, 100-degree weather, we see Santa Claus is out here sweating. It's just so, it has nothing to do with Brazilian culture.
You know, the decorations of snowflakes, there's no snow here. And so we see that he has been marketed all over the world the way he is. And maybe we think that he's a part of our culture in North America or in some places where we have wintertime, but we see that he's been marketed everywhere, like Mickey Mouse. Except that Mickey Mouse is kind of an innocent figure, you know.
But Santa Claus has been marketed to replace Jesus Christ. And one of the things that we see is this very strong emphasis on the material things, as you were mentioning.
You know, this love for material things. That were taught to love since childhood. You know, this giver of gifts. It's just distorted in such a way. Of course, you know, to give a gift in itself is harmless. But if you use the giving of gifts in order to replace serving others, which would be a real Christian value, then that's another thing. That's
Richard: materialism.
But we see this at Christmas all the time, Gilbert, where people suddenly get this sort of social spirit. They want to do something for other people. And so for this month of December, they volunteer a little or buy a food hamper for the poor or something like this, which is, of course, a very beautiful thing. And then during the rest of the year, completely forget about that.
So it's like it stimulates something only at this time and not the ongoing aspect of serving others that would be more Christian.
Not just a thing of getting gifts, of giving gifts, of doing something at one time of the year, but of doing this in our lives, loving our neighbor and loving others as we would love ourselves.
Gilbert: Yes, you know, it would be good to analyze this in terms of psychosocial pathology, as we say. We use the word pathology. Or you can say mistakes.
What are our mistakes in the situation? Religious people tend to use the word sin. I like to avoid that word because there are many moral connotations to that, an attitude of intolerance in looking at our mistakes. I prefer the scientific word of our neurosis, or in serious cases, psychosis, the mistakes that we make that are harmful to us. And so, in looking at the situation of Santa Claus, in effect, what happens is it takes away the spiritual aspect of this time of the year and replaces it with the material aspect.
And, you know, Rich, we see many people going around, instead of being Christ-like in their servitude toward others, the spiritual aspect, they go around being Santa-like, you know, seeing how they can promote materialism, giving gifts and gifts, and, oh, you were Santa this year, weren't you? You know, who bought the most gifts? And we see that it has become completely materialistic.
Richard: And it's, like, marketed strongly.
In fact, I understand. There were some articles written back in the late 1800s, I believe. Clement Clark Moore wrote The Visit from St. Nicholas, where he described this figure. And this became very popular through the newspaper system of that day. Thomas Nast, in his Harper's Weekly drawings, created the image of a white-bearded Santa who gave gifts to children. And Coca-Cola took the image of Santa with the beard and everything and put him in a red suit, the Coca-Cola colors, for an advertisement in the 1920s.
So the marketing of Santa Claus is very clear, I think, Gilbert.
Gilbert: It was an international, multinational marketing of Santa Claus, and all at the same time throughout the whole world. So who in practical terms has this marketing power to do that? You know, we can see that there's a multinational corporations behind this or the owners of these corporations. We call them economically powerful people.
And Keppe has a fascinating book analyzing the psychopathology of people with power. It's the first study ever of the people of power. It's called Liberation of the People, the Pathology of Power that he wrote in 84. And it's the first and best study of this type of psychosis. You know, it shows that exactly people who don't have the capacity to work, to produce things, to benefit others by their work, it is they who want to control others.
And in the United States, the Constitution itself protects the people from, how can we say, domineering political power, but it has made no provisions for controlling economic power. And so what we see is that the most imbalanced individuals go to that sector. And in fact, there are families who have been there for a long time now, and they want to, they do, control others.
And it's not the type of power that Christ came to give to us. In fact, people wanted him to be their leader. And he said, "no, look, I'm serving you. He came as a servant and not as a powerful person." And so who would want to replace the spirituality of Christ with the materialism of Santa Claus? Who would like to try to eliminate Christ from the earth?
Well,
Richard: now I remember the church lady from Saturday night talking about Santa and rearranging the letters to come up with Satan.
Is this where you're going, Gilbert?
Gilbert: Yes, so we can see the link between the sickness, the pathology of economically powerful people, the most powerful people in the world, the sickness that they have with negative spiritual entities, with demons, to put it simply, or Satan. They're being oriented by Satan. So it seems to us just by scientific analysis that Santa Claus was created by these economically powerful people, marketed by them, oriented by demonic forces in order for us to not celebrate the incredible mystery of the birth of Christ here in the earth.
Richard: And then to have the experience, I think this shows very clearly that it's a really perverse orientation, Gilbert, because not only is it marketed and promoted and all the kids want to see him, but then when you're five or six years old, you discover the guy doesn't exist at all.
It was a complete myth. Santa Claus is nothing and the children are devastated at this point and this shows there's nothing to believe in. I believed with all my heart and soul in this being with the white beard who would bring gifts and would bring peace on earth or whatever it is that he would bring and now he doesn't even exist. This
Gilbert: is another point that we need to be very careful with.
It's very subtle but very dynamic in the life of a child where he's believing in a person who seems to be like a good person jolly. He gives gifts, beautiful. We associate him with everything that is celebrative at the Christmas time. And then suddenly you find out that he doesn't exist. And so this is a blow to the faith, the natural faith that people have in goodness.
And it's on purpose this. Then people have difficulties with faith in general, faith in goodness, faith in what is real.
And so we have to really reconsider the emphasis that we're giving to
Richard: Santa Claus. It seems a very cruel thing, Gilbert, to portray this image, to give children all of this belief, and then just to take it away from them. I mean, it sounds a little bit like I'm analyzing my trauma of discovering this when I was young. I don't remember so much trauma, but it is something like you start to develop an attitude that there's nothing to believe in.
Nothing's true. If they're telling us all this and showing it to us everywhere, and now he's nothing. What the hell is this?
Gilbert: Because as we are fallen beings, there is an element of faith that we need in order to start to understand the Creator and perceive him better and his creation. And so it's exactly at this level of faith, if Satan can deliver a blow to that early in childhood, then this disconnects us from the reality of the Creator.
And so this question of Santa Claus, it really has to be better conscientized by people in general because it is not something good, not at all.
Richard: And I feel the same thing's happening with all this Harry Potter mania, Gilbert. It's this creating illusions in kids that are impossible to fulfill, you know. And I was thinking of the great Malachi Martin's book about exorcism, and I want to make a connection here with the Luciferian dialectic, which is, I feel, what you're touching on now.
In this book called Hostage to the Devil, Malachi Martin Brilliantly analyzes five cases of exorcism, and he shows that underlying each exorcism, each spiritual exorcism, there was a dialectical point. He doesn't talk about it in terms of dialectics. I'm using Dr. Keppe's language to define it, because I've analyzed it quite a bit.
And there are two particular dialectical points underlying two specific exorcisms that I think are really worth reviewing in light of this Luciferian question that you've raised, the spiritual aspect of the introduction of Santa Claus. And this is, this dialectic that there is no mystery in life. Love is just a chemical reaction. Everything happens biologically. There's no great mystery in life anywhere. That's one of the dialectics.
And the second one is that everything is explainable through rational means, taking away this intuition, this sensing that we have of something greater. And I think these areas are what happens with Santa Claus. These kinds of dialectics are what happens with the question of Santa Claus, where he's taken out of the picture, showing that, hey, there's nothing there after all, nothing mysterious, nothing wonderful.
It's just a marketing ploy.
Gilbert: You mentioned the question of Harry Potter, which is influencing people a lot these days, especially young people. And the problem with this series of books of Harry Potter is that the dialectic that is made between good and evil, because it is a false dialectic, in these books, evil is seen as a natural part of nature and is accepted as such.
Instead of the reality of the fact, as the fourth century theologian Tatchian shows us, that evil is the absence of good. It's the negation of what is good. So evil, it's an attack, an attitude of attacking what exists from the creator, the beauty of life, the goodness, the truth, what is authentic. Evil doesn't exist in and of itself. It exists, in quote, as an attitude against creation, against what is beautiful.
And so this false dialectic of Harry Potter books, it perturbs the human mind because it is not real.
It's just a fantasy that brings us into a kind of delusion about what is life. We accept the pathological elements of life rather than dealing with them in order to control them so that we can enter into what is beautiful in life. For example, people don't contemplate what is the birth of Christ. And it is indeed a mystery. It's an amazing thing.
Imagine where Mary is approached by the Holy Spirit through one of the archangels, you know. So we have the Holy Spirit involved in this situation. The Father, whom we call God the Father. Imagine the humility involved, the degree of humility in wanting to send his Son into the earth where people are blind, they're fallen into spiritual darkness so that they can be, let's say, so that Christ can teach them personally where they are going wrong so that he can be born as a man, as a child, growing up, and then giving us orientation.
How humble that is, the humility involved in the Trinity. You know, this person who is Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, it's a mystery, the birth of Christ. You know, it's a mystery of humility and how the three work together as one in order to help us. You know, out of our spiritual darkness. And what? We don't want to contemplate this during Christmas time.
We want to do all of these superficial, artificial things of Santa Claus and ho, ho, ho and materialism. And what happens during this time of the year is that people get depressed, they have accidents, because this is not our true spiritual nature. It's something false.
Richard: And Jesus brought the true spirit of the human being. Well, you said at the very beginning that he didn't want to be our leader.
He wanted to come to serve, to show us the way. And so when you contemplate this, you're not contemplating the agitation that we normally associate with Christmas.
You're interiorizing much. You have much more interior experience, a question of peace, of loving other people, of forgiveness, of gentleness, of tremendous power, but not power that's being manifested in a dominating way. So the contemplation of Christ's life is a whole different experience for us.
Gilbert: Ah, yes. You know, Rich, if you just look at the results of Santa Claus during the end of the year, that everybody gets into the spirit of this, the results of that, just looking at the statistics, for example, you can see what the statistics are in your city, but here in São Paulo where we live, for example.
In December, 90% of the automobile accidents throughout the year happen in December. And in December, the hospitals are full. They fill up. Not in January, as you might think, as the result of going on a drunken binge for the New Year's.
No, it happens in December already. You know, in preparation of this enormous inner agitation of materialism and this false celebration of Santa Claus, who was a made-up figure marketed by multinational owners, industrialists, who are linked to very dubious spiritual forces in order to deviate us from the celebration of Christ, our real spiritual
Richard: nature. Dr. Keppe was saying recently that he feels that consumerism, materialism, Gilbert, is worse than alcoholism or drug addiction, whether we're talking about illegal drugs or prescription drugs, worse, because it lessens the experience of the human being.
It takes us only into the senses, and so we lose contact with this greater glory that Jesus brought, the truth of who we are. And so if we're orienting only to our senses, to getting, to having, this is really ripe ground for our narcissism, for our selfishness, for our envy, for our megalomania.
All of these lesser diminishing qualities of the human being are glorified through the process of materialism, of consumption. Consumption.
Gilbert: That's interesting, Rich. So we can monitor the level of our materialism by the level of which we start to reject this idea of Santa Claus, because we're addicted to Santa Claus and materialism. And so either you go cold turkey, or we get off of this a little at a time and start entering into what is real, the reality, who we really are inside.
Richard: So let me just focuses a bit, Gilbert, towards the end here. This beautiful book of Dr. Keppe is called Glorification, which you and I have been using in our teleclasses that we conduct frequently every Tuesday nights. And in this book, this wonderful book of Glorification, which is a scientific analysis of spirituality of the Creator, actually, he says the most optimistic message that humanity has ever received is that of Christ.
Optimistic message. It's incredible how he surmounted with the greatest ease all of the things that cause man so much anxiety. So he was showing us how to overcome the very thing that causes us sickness and pain.
Gilbert: Yes, Jesus was putting people in contact with themselves, with their inner lives. What are they really feeling inside and you know he condemned no one absolutely no one he wants people to have perception of their problems so that the beautiful can develop and this is the opposite of course of what Satan wants of what the concept of Santa Claus does.
We need to have a better contact with Christ himself and especially during Christmas time. It's a celebration of the amazing thing that happened, that God the Father would put him here on the earth in the form of a child in order to teach us personally where we are going wrong.
You know, because we all have neuroses within us. We all make psychological mistakes. We all have attitudes that are not good that we need to become aware of, become more tolerant with each other. Not only within one culture, but more tolerant with one nation with another, one culture with another, one person for another, helping other people. What can I do to service this person?
What can I do to help him in an authentic way?
Richard: So a Christian world would be these values that were talked about 2,000 years ago that we forget all the time at Christmas. We sort of remember it in a vague kind of way, but we don't have a sense of trying to make that life our own. We're much more content to just give our gifts and give things to people and think that we've done our duty in that way.
It says here in Dr. Keppe's text, "the most optimistic message that humanity has ever received is that of Christ."
Is there optimism then? Our totally materialistic, consumptive, destructive society. Is there cause for optimism?
Gilbert: Yes. If we can contemplate the reality of what the Holy Spirit, what God the Father did to put Christ into the earth to help us, if we contemplate that, act on that, the reality of that, we will link to something that is much greater than we are, than each individual.
And this is the christmas spirit and
Richard: that elusive christmas spirit is available to all of us. I hope you can find it this year and all year and more importantly bring it into your part of our desperately in need world. Merry christmas to you. I'm Richard Lloyd Jones. This is Thinking with Somebody Else's Head. Talk to you in 2010
