December 2, 2001

By Paul Britner

My topic this morning is why I believe in Santa Claus. As usual, let me start with a disclaimer. I would not have to try very hard to prepare an anti-Christmas sermon, decrying the materialism and the superficiality of Christmas. It would be easy to gather stories and anecdotes about how gift giving involves more pressure than pleasure, and how family visits sometimes produce more tension than tenderness. I could talk about the burden many feel to get Christmas cards out and to have the house ready for company. If I wanted to give a feminist critique of Christmas, I easily could fill 20 minutes with commentary about the disproportionate share of the work women seem to perform to make Christmas such a special time for the rest of us. Any or all of these subjects could form a valid critique of Christmas in America these days. For all of you who may identity with one or more of the feelings I just described, I want to validate that.

For the next 20 minutes or so, though, I want you to set aside those feelings. Just for today, I invite you to act as if Christmas is everything that it can be: full of joy, generosity, wonder, laughter.

I got the idea for this sermon back in September. In one of my classes, I was asked to write some journal entries on my childhood experiences with religion. Somewhat off-handedly, I wrote that I believed in Santa Claus even though I did not believe in Jesus. Of course, what I believe about both has changed over the years.

Think for a moment about the world in which a 5-year old lives and what a 5-year old knows and has experienced. When I was five, I lived in Ellettsville, a very small town in southern Indiana. Given my knowledge of the world, it was perfectly rational for me to believe that a man, such as Santa Claus, could visit every household in the world on Christmas eve. Yet, as my mother likes to remind people, I was one of those kids who always ran ahead of her to the swimming pool and jumped into the deep end. So, I also knew as early as age five that Jesus could not have walked on water.

In retrospect, I think this story is proof that I was destined to become a Unitarian-Universalist. Even at age five, I was thinking independently and basing my beliefs not on what I was told, but what my life experiences and my own intuition told me. That made me different, and that’s not an easy thing for a five year old – or a forty-five year old, for that matter. As the great philosopher Kermit the Frog says, "it is not easy being green." And that is the theme I want to explore for the next few minutes.

Human beings are inherently rational. What we believe makes sense to us. So, you may ask, how do I explain irrational behavior. The answer lies in the difference between being rational and being right, or even reasonable. If I said, all dogs have five legs, Rover is a dog, therefore Rover has five legs, my reasoning would be valid, but it would not be right. Likewise, if I was convinced that aliens were tracking our movements with radio beams that could not penetrate aluminum, it would be perfectly rationale for me to make a suit for myself out of Reynolds Wrap. That, perhaps, is a silly example. Yet, it makes the point that, with very few exceptions, human behavior is rational to the person who engages in the behavior. Let me repeat that, human behavior is rational to the person who engages in the behavior.

Here’s another example. A person is traumatized as a child by something that occurred in the dark. Thirty years later, the person still will not leave the house at night. Objectively speaking, we might agree that that fear is unreasonable. Yet, it is rational to be the person in the house. It makes sense to that person. Now, I’m not saying that we have to accept unreasonable behavior, or that we should never challenge someone’s thinking, by, for example, confronting my Reynolds Wrap man. I am saying two things, though. First, we will never be able to understand a person’s behavior until we understand why that behavior makes sense to that person. Second, the difference between tolerating people and accepting them is believing them. Now, I know that second point seems like a stretch, but let me expand on the first point, and then the second one will make more sense.

To illustrate my first point, let me tell you a true story. My wife and I were married for a total of 17 years. For most of the first ten years of our marriage, we had a dysfunctional pattern of behavior during mealtimes. She wanted to talk during dinner to process the events of the day, hear how my day went, and share the latest news. This may surprise some of you, but I like to be quiet during dinner at home. So, if there was conversation, I was annoyed, and if there was silence, my wife was frustrated. Then, one day, with the help of another couple with whom we chose to confide, we figured out what was going on.

My wife grew up in a violent and abusive household, and I did not. If you have never experienced that, you might assume silence would be welcome. Yet, my wife shared that it was the silence at the dinner table that was the most unnerving, because she didn’t know what her parents were thinking, and she always was waiting for something to happen. She was afraid to say anything, for fear of setting someone off.

On the other hand, I had a far less traumatic childhood. Yet, I still had certain negative experiences imprinted onto me. My father was a minister. It’s a social position. I was raised to engage in polite conversation with people I didn’t know or know anything about. I didn’t like it, and I wasn’t particularly good at it. We all know what it’s like to meet new people and to feel that awkward silence that comes with not knowing what to say. That was a way of life for me. I hasten to add that I’m much more comfortable in social settings today. Still, you know what I mean when I say that a relationship has achieved a level of comfort when you can be with a person without feeling like you have to make conversation, and that’s the feeling I wanted at mealtimes.

Of course, a healthy relationship is not an all or nothing thing, that is, it not all silence and it’s not all talking. Yet, because of the lives we had led, she and I were at opposite ends of that continuum. She interpreted silence as anger waiting to erupt, and I interpreted silence as trust and comfort. Once we knew that, we were able to work that out between us. We lived with that uneasy tension, though, for ten years.

Conventional wisdom tells us that the way to understand someone is to walk a mile in that person’s shoes. When possible, that’s true. Yet, there is no way either my wife or I could have experienced the other’s childhood. To repeat my first point, we will never be able to understand a person’s behavior until we understand why that behavior makes sense to that person. It’s not enough to try to imagine what something must have been like for another person. We have to ask, and sometimes, we have to prod a little. Let me give you a tip on doing that I picked up along my journey. Try to avoid or minimize asking people why they do whatever they do. The use of the interrogative "why" puts people on the defensive. You can get at the same point by asking questions like, "what is about this situation that makes you comfortable or uncomfortable or fearful or anxious or angry?" Instead of, "Why would you think that?" consider a variation of, "How is what you’re telling me related to what you have learned or what experiences have you have had."

Now, hold these thoughts for a few minutes while I move on to my second point, and then I’ll draw them together. The difference between tolerating people and accepting them is believing them.

Have any of you been on either end of one of these conversations:

I’m cold.

I’m angry.

I hate my boss.

Now, in the interest of full disclosure, I’ve been at both ends of those kinds of conversations in the past, and I probably will be in the future. As we say, "progress, not perfection." Let’s think about what these statements are doing. In the first, saying "you’re not cold," I’m denying the other person’s truth. In the second, "you’re not angry, you’re just tired," I’m redefining the other person’s truth so that it fits my own. And in the third, "that’s a terrible thing to say," I’m oppressing the other person’s truth.

Each one of us arrives at out own sense of the truth based on the totality of our lives, and that includes what we learn and what we experience. Yet, in each one of the examples I provided, the message of the second speaker is that, what the first speaker has learned or experienced is not valid. We all know how that feels, and none of us likes it.

Now, to further illustrate this point, if in the first example, I give the person a blanket, but I don’t really believe the person is cold, I’m just tolerating that person. Yet, even if I feel warm but believe the other person is cold, and I get that person a blanket, then, I’m accepting that person. Put another way, in the first instance, where I didn’t think the person was cold, I was merely indulging the person. In the second, where I did believe the person was cold, I was affirming how that person felt.

Thus, to make the point one more time, but with a little addendum: the difference between tolerating people and accepting them is believing them, even when your experience tells you otherwise.

Now, in putting these points together, I trust you to use common sense. If your spouse tells you that he or she is cold, do not ask that person "How is what you’re telling me related to what you have learned or what experiences you have had." Sometimes, it’s important to talk, and sometimes, you just gotta get the blanket. I’m sure most of you know that, but I just like to make sure that I reach everyone in the audience!

So, what does any of this have to do with Santa Claus and Unitarian Universalism? As I said earlier, when I was growing up, the ideas and the values and meaning of Santa Claus made a lot more sense to me than the ideas I was hearing about Jesus and the Christian tradition. To this day, when I see my nieces rushing to the Christmas tree to see what Santa has brought them, and I see the joy, not just in their faces, but in my brother’s and his wife’s as well, then, if only for one day, I can set aside what I see humans doing to each other every other day. I can have hope. I can believe that people are good, and that we can be better than we are most of the time. On the other hand, even though I believe Jesus may well have spoken more truth than any other being to have lived on this earth, I did not believe growing up and I do not believe now that he was conceived by a spirit that descended from heaven and that impregnated his mother, and my learning and life experiences tell me that he probably did not walk across a lake or turn a jug of water into wine. And, don’t even get me started on original sin. Where I grew up on the east side of Indianapolis, my viewpoint was not readily affirmed.

In fact, until I found Unitarian Universalism, I felt like the guy I mentioned at the beginning of this sermon who was all wrapped up in aluminum foil. I felt different. I felt that something was wrong with me. Here, though, I was not just tolerated, I was accepted. I was affirmed. I was told, in effect, if you want to believe in Santa Claus, or the Easter Bunny or the Tooth Fairy, then you go right ahead. I can celebrate the birth of Jesus today, and, in his life, I can find hope that we can be better than we are most of the time. Yet, I still believe in Santa Claus, and I’m going to give you my top ten reasons why I believe in Santa Claus in just a minute. First, though, I want to tie up a couple of loose ends.

Because it is one of the most secular and religious holidays, Christmas is perhaps the most ambiguous holiday we celebrate, and, for that reason, may be the perfect symbol of Unitarian Universalism. We are a minority faith tradition. For many of us, this is the first place that has embraced our life experiences and affirmed who we are. Here, we seek the greater truth by learning from each other. When we seek to understand why other people think differently than we do, we grow closer to the truth. Here, our chosen faith is not denied, redefined, or oppressed. And that is pretty good reason to celebrate.

Now, as I promised, are my top ten reasons for believing in Santa Claus.

10. There is an official Santa Claus website.

9. In The Miracle on 34^th Street, a judge said there was a Santa Claus, and as a lawyer and officer of the court, if a judge says its true, it’s true.

8. Every December, there is a suspicious labor shortage among the elves at the Keebler cookie factory.

7. Without Santa Claus bringing up the rear of the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day parade, a million New Yorkers along the parade route would not know when to go home.

6. Christmas Eve is the only night of the year parents can get their children to stay in their beds.

5. Two words: reindeer droppings.

4. There’s no evidence to support the rumor that Santa Claus is just a creation of Hallmark greeting cards and the makers of fruit cakes.

3. If there is no Santa Claus, then who has been sleeping with Mrs. Claus?

2. Because I really, really want a digital camera.

1. I ’m getting too old to keep passing up opportunities for joy.