Douglas Kern opens All I Want for Christmas… with an amusing take on Christmas loot:
Recently I read that in Austria and some Latin American countries, the bringer of gifts at Christmas is not Santa Claus, but rather the Christ Child. I like our way better. The notion of the Christ Child as the dispenser of Christmas loot raises troubling theological dilemmas that Santa just doesn’t present.
When Santa accidentally gives your kid a copy of Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas, it’s just shabby elf labor gone awry, but when The Second Person of the Blessed Trinity is giving your offspring ultra-violent video games, it’s a harbinger of the apocalypse. And while it’s no big deal when Santa gives you a pair of Dockers that’s a size too small, what is God try to tell you when his Son gives you size 32 instead of 34? Does God want you to lose weight? Does 32 have a sacred meaning in Aramaic? And if you take them back, what will you tell Saint Peter when, on Judgment Day, he asks what you did with the in-store credit at Sears? Multiply all these problems by a hundred if you’re a Calvinist. There you are, painstakingly scrutinizing yourself and your position in life to see if you’re a member of the elect, and the Christ Child leaves you a sign of God’s will: a $30 gift card for Applebee’s. What could it mean?