Earlier this week one of my wife's co-workers asked us, "Does Joy still believe in Santa and the Easter Bunny? I thought my daughter [8 like Joy] didn't anymore but yesterday she said we've got to take her
Easter basket on our trip so the Bunny can make his deliveries."
I said: "As long as we keep putting crap out for Joy to wake up and find, she's gonna believe."
Co-worker: "Yeah, she'll be like 'This doesn't make sense, but crap keeps showing up...oh well.'"
Me: "She's too smart for her own good. Probably keep "believing" at fourteen to get more crap."
Co-worker: "But should I tell my daughter the truth? I don't want her to find out on the streets."
Me: "At least not at the same time she finds out about drugs and hookers."
Co-worker: "What?!"
Me: "Nothing. She's eight...no harm no foul I suppose. Childhood innocence is disappearing fast enough as it is. I say let them hold on to the Bunny for at least another year.
So I got to thinking about the Easter Bunny which naturally lead me to thinking about Jesus and Santa Claus. Easter, after all, is about Jesus and who doesn't think of Santa when they think of the Easter Bunny. Which got me thinking how timing is everything because here we have two men that we're pretty sure existed [
Jesus and
Saint Nicholas] who were both generous and both had a follower named Peter [a disciple for Jesus, a black slave boy for St. Nick...not kidding] and they might have both been a little racist [see
my last post for Jesus' racist leanings and as for St. Nick, well, I think the black slave boy thing speaks for itself].
The legend of these two men still exist today but one of them has a major world religion in his name while the other has really just one day attributed to him, which is coincidentally the day we celebrate the birth of the one with the world religion in his name. Both men went from humble beginnings to world-wide recognition and worship. But timing, apparently, is everything, and we have Christianity instead of a major world religion based on Santa Claus [But could you imagine it? No...really! A Santa Claus religion. Would we worship in giant toy shops or igloos? Would Santa Claus Is Coming To Town be a standard hymn? Would the reindeer be his disciples? The possibilities are endless].
What's the point here? Religion truly is an invention of man, and time and context play a major role. Just ask the makers any mp3 player before the ipod, or the builders of social websites before MySpace, or the clearly-ahead-of-their-time geniuses behind this shirt: