Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, December 5, 1993 TAG: 9312050045
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: C-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: ed shamy
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
There is no way I'm about to be lured into an intellectual duel with Harlan Miller. He is, after all, an associate professor of philosophy at Virginia Tech; I, a guy who surfed through four years of higher education on the waves of courses in "American Cinema" and "Physics for Poets."
But on Friday, the distinguished professor delivered his annual diatribe against Santa Claus, debunking "the whole vicious Santa Claus myth" and speaking to the "moral depravity of Santa Claus."
About a hundred impressionable college students listened to Miller, who calls himself the "Anti-Claus" and dresses in a green faux Santa outfit for the event - which he's staged each Yuletide since 1984.
Miller said things about Santa that would make an elf's feet uncurl, recounting others' problems with The Fat Man in Red:
Santa as distraction from the true religious significance of Christmas - just a single misplaced letter removed from Satan. Miller told the obviously distraught students in his audience that a New Jersey priest a few years ago told a bunch of kiddies that Santa was dead and Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer was a myth. "The bishop sent him on retreat - after all, Santa is important business, as opposed, for example, to sexually abusing altar boys."
Santa as subversive counterculture figure who sabotages the free market by giving away merchandise. "Santa's not anti-establishment; he's the commanding general of the thought police of capitalism."
But Miller's own difficulties with the Santa myth are more the heady stuff you'd expect from a man cleaved from reality by more than a quarter-century in the ivory towers of academia.
He bemoaned the "delight in falsehood" that Santa Claus engenders among his legions of followers, even though, he blasphemed, "there is no Santa Claus."
Children are told there is a Claus, and that he will reward good behavior, and that he did reinstate Rudolph.
When older kids tell younger children there's really no Claus, "they're punished for daring to commit Truth," said Miller. The scoundrel.
"Kids notice at the mall there are quite often two or three Santas in sight, but the child's innate rationality is suppressed," claimed Miller. "Forget reason, just believe."
Santa, that swine, becomes "Big Brother in the Red Suit," monitoring emotions and behavior from afar, forcing believers to toe some imaginary line of conformity. He's little more than a useful tool for the ruling classes to keep the peasantry in line.
This exploitative iron grip - "stick with the rules, and we'll reward you" - ranks Santa with the great robber barons of his generation, Miller argued.
Believing in Santa reinforces existing socioeconomic strata in the capitalist society in which he's so embedded, Miller exhorted.
Even though gifts from Santa are supposedly doled out on the basis of a child's behavior through the year, "rich kids, as a rule, get a lot more - and a lot more expensive - presents than poor kids. Santa is the source of presents, so the economic status of the family is irrelevant. If Santa doesn't care, how do we explain why poor children get poorer, fewer gifts?"
By tying behavior - and, by extension, morality - to the quantity and quality of gifts, don't we signal that the poor are somehow morally inferior?
"The Santa story," railed Miller, breaking my heart, "provides some protection for the poor parent. Santa didn't bring it. The parent doesn't have to admit that the family lacks the economic means. It's buck-passing."
For months of the year, Santa is a distant, unreachable presence. He offers no appeal process.
And he is, noted Miller, "an irredeemable sexist who has never apparently hired a female elf."
Girls - and, by extension, women - are portrayed as brainless creatures encouraged "to sit on the laps of old men and giggle mindlessly."
Santa has sexually abused nearly three-quarters of all children since the turn of the century, claimed Miller. If you can't remember his abuse, it's because you've repressed it.
"He enters the house unannounced, he departs mysteriously, and he has an ambiguous relationship with members of the household," said Miller. Saint Nick isn't the sort of guy, in short, that the DARE officer would be encouraging your kid to trust.
Sexist, pedophile, capitalist dog - Miller's list would be incomplete if he didn't accuse Santa of racism.
He did.
He cited the Rudolph tale as evidence: The other reindeers exclude Rudolph with Santa's implicit approval only on the basis of his red nose. "That's pretty savage treatment for a little reindeer."
Only when Rudolph's nose seems useful does Santa reinstate the miscreant, and the "reindeer community over which Santa is dictator," those "obedient little running dogs," accepts Rudolph.
The message? Accept those with a physical difference only when they show some potential for social utility.
"There's no reason to treat tall people politely, unless we need them for our basketball team," Miller said. "It's a thoroughly corrupt and malignant view."
"It's not surprising that there is such an s.o.b. [as Santa], it's surprising that anyone believes in him," Miller said.
Eager to get to a philosophy club reception, Miller wrapped up his harangue without explaining how Santa manages to get around on that sleigh when it only snows on Christmas Eve every 50 years; or how he comes down that chimney with a fire burning; or how he gains entry to homes without chimneys; or how he visits all those houses in one night; or who eats all those cookies left for him.
He explained none of that, because even high-falutin philosophy professors can't explain the inexplicable.
So maybe Santa is an exploitative old letch. Everybody's got to stand for something.
I'm still a believer.
But I'm warning you, Harlan Miller: One mean word from you about the Tooth Fairy, and I'm getting nasty.
by CNB