The approaching season of Xmas always distresses me.

"Santa is Evil", is a pamphlet I wrote years ago, but never had the courage to hand out.   

I remember very little of Primary School being away sick most of it and unable to play sport or just play when I was in attendance, so I rarely spoke to the other boys who sometimes played practical jokes on me, though mostly they did not dislike me, they just didn’t like me.  So an occasion when I spoke to another boy is an unusual memory.  I recall seeing someone crying.  He was not a friend, as I had none, but he was in my class.  I asked what was wrong,

He told me he was upset because he just found out the most terrible thing.  I wondered if someone had died, then he told me there was no Santa Claus.  I was stunned.  I still recall my reaction because being Jewish I had no belief in such an entity that I had barely heard of, and had no idea till then that anyone actually took such an obviously absurd concept seriously.  Even at the age of six or seven, or what ever it was I knew that much.  Anyway, what had made it far worse for him, he confided in me was that it was his Parents who had lied to him.  The people he most trusted.  He swore he would never trust his parents again.  I think he decided then never to trust anyone again.

The Xians persist with this dishonest system.  It must interact in some with their equally mythical resurrected deity.  Perhaps after this shock of finding their parents are not to be trusted, the Church steps in and promises the “truth” and what follows becomes ingrained and hard to shake. 

My former friend T, I had better not identify him, was a sorry soul:  very intelligent, but alone and lost.  His mother practiced conditional love.  She would love him when he was good but reject him if he did not live up to her standard or what ever his fault was in her eyes.  Without unconditional love, it is a challenge to grow up healthy.  Her worst fault was no doubt Xmas.  I was older than T, and not much younger than his parents, with whom I became slightly friendly, which was odd.  But because I am not a parent myself, I have always hung out with other people who are not parents.  It is wrong to divide people into old and young, it is parents and those of any age who are not parents that is the true dichotomy (with exceptions).  Anyway, one year he was out and away and I dropped in just as she was decorating the tree and was very sad that he was not helping as he used to do when he was young, and presumably when he still believed in Santa.  I bet he was a victim of the terrible fraud that some parents perpetrate on their children by rearing them to believe in something that turns out to be totally false.  He didn’t trust anyone, till he met me, and then I don’t think he ever fully trusted me either.

There must be a lot of people in our society who have suffered in this way.  If those children were also abused by people they trusted they would certainly have trouble trusting again.  How many social misfits and social problem people are the result of this deception that shatters trust.