There seems to be a progression (or deterioration, depending on your POV) happening. Grinch and Rudolph replace the explicitly Christian message of “Charlie Brown” with some vague “Christmas values” that are about togetherness, tolerance, and giving. Giving is construed in basically commercial terms — Santa’s workshop stands in for the machinery of capitalist production (not to get all Marxist or anything)and the “magic” of Christmas, the truth at its core, the big payoff, is about getting stuff. Meanwhile, the harsh realities of production and distribution (think of underpaid child factory workers in China, applying lead paint to your kid’s Thomas the Tank Engine toys) are magically “disappeared” into cozy images of happy elves wielding tiny hammers.

Then in “Year Without a Santa Claus” “T’was the Night” and “Santa Clause is Coming to Town,” “faith” is reinterpreted as faith in — the existence of Santa Claus! “You gotta believe,” these shows urge us, and what we gotta believe in is Santa himself, or the spirit he supposedly embodies of, well, togetherness, tolerance and giving. Most of all, giving.

Even when I was a kid, I wondered about it. At the end of “Grinch,” we are told the big lesson the Grinch learns is that “Christmas doesn’t come from a store.” I remember asking my dad, “Well if that’s true, then how come he has to bring all the presents back at the end?” Even then, I realized that we needed the Grinch to bring back the gifts; and that the ostensible message of the show, and its narrative trajectory completely contradicted each other. Or perhaps it would be more correct to say that they offer a new logic of Christmas — one distinctly at odds with the Christian world view. It goes something like this:

Christmas doesn’t come from a store. Instead, you gotta “believe” (in togetherness, tolerance, giving, Santa Claus) — and then you’ll get your stuff anyway.

While the Santa we have today shares some attributes of God, the big difference is that Santa is works based. Karma based even. Be good and get rewarded. Do bad and get left out.

The gospel is grace. I want my son to know that I give good gifts because he is my son.

Santa’s message (& religions message), “Do good and be accepted”

God’s message, “Through grace, in Christ you are accepted, and through the Spirit you will grow in doing good”

Santa gets it backwards.

*frump face*

…for goodness’ sake.”

Did anyone else find these lyrics TERRIFYING in their theological implications?

I mean, if he knows all that and is good, and if you’re being constantly reminded of it…CAN one even be good for goodness’ sake?