There Is No Santa Claus

On Christmas Eve when I was five years old I told my older brother and sister that there was no Santa Claus. I didn't do it to ruin their Christmas, or to be a smart-aleck, but just as a simple statement of fact. They started jumping up and down and screaming as I continued, stating the obvious, that my parents were in their bedroom wrapping gifts. 

As the screaming continued my dad came out, and gruffly asked "What's going on here?" In unison they cried "He says there's no Santa Claus! He says there's no Santa Claus!" My dad turned to me and said "Is that true? Did you say there is no Santa Claus?" I looked up at him and said "Yeah! There isn't any Santa Claus! I saw you going into your room with boxes. You're wrapping gifts in there!

He looked down at me and said "Come here!," and had me follow him around the corned in our "flat" on the South Side of Chicago. He said to me in the sternest terms, "Listen! I don't care what you think or what you believe, but you're going to go out there and tell them that there's a Santa Claus! Otherwise, you get no Christmas, no gifts, and you stay in your room!" I looked up at him and said "O.K.," and went back to my brother and sister and said "I was just kidding. There really is a Santa Claus." All was well, and we all got plenty for Christmas, but mine weren't from Santa Claus. I played along, ever the survivor.

This is one of my favorite childhood memories, along with running away from home when I was three and throwing gravel at Douglas MacArthur when I was six. It began a long life of independence, free thinking and uninhibited dissent. Rarely has it been as much fun, though, and at this stage it is wearying. I still manage to tweak things here and there, and it is still worth the aggravation. It is too late to change now.

Not believing in Santa Claus started me on a lifelong sensitivity to imaginary truth, to conventional wisdom that is not wisdom, to false beliefs, and to the pressure to conform to these beliefs. It took a while with Catholicism. I went to Catholic schools for 17 years, counting kindergarten, before I had finally had enough. About the time I graduated from a Catholic college in Minnesota in 1967 the Beatles went to India to meditate with a guru. I immediately was inspired, and eventually found a guru for myself, Swami Muktananda. It was great for a while, but that soured too. I lasted eight years, then left for good when I moved back from Hawaii in 1985. 

What makes these experiences pertinent for the times in which we find ourselves is that the region, nation and myth known as "America" is trapped in an obsession with imaginary beliefs, false teachers and loathing of nonbelievers and imagined "others." It has reached the level of mass psychosis, and shows no signs of letting up.

It will let up, though. Trends arise, last a while, then life intervenes, people die-off, and new trends arise. Donald Trump, the guru of this mass psychosis, will eventually die, be indicted, sued to the point of penury and just plain run out of steam. He's 75, in mental decline, and has to work harder-and-harder to maintain his grip on his devotees. 

And, to some degree, the madness has gone far beyond Trump. One of the more prominent groups storming the Capitol on January 6 was a conspiracy theory cult known as "QAnon," followers of an anonymous know-it-all, who feeds them with fresh conspiracy theories on an almost daily basis. "Q," the leader, is as likely as not Roger Stone, professional political trickster and felon pardoned by Trump. Whoever it is, he (almost certainly) is likely peeing his pants with laughter every time he sees how stupid and gullible his followers are. Some even believe John F. Kennedy and his son JFK Jr. will come back from the dead to reinstate Trump in the presidency. 

And so it goes. The Polar ice caps are melting, our infinite-growth on a finite planet economic system is facing collapse, and our social fabric is ripping to shreds. Our country is lost in pretend. It won't last. Reality will have the last word. There is no Santa Claus.

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Here's a song. Here's another. And another. Bruce Springsteen. Lyle Lovett. Bob Dylan. Traffic. Mötley Crüe. Ray Charles. The Beatles. Fleetwood Mac. Procol Harum. String Cheese Incident. Donovan. Donovan again. Sammy Davis Jr. The Grateful Dead. Mississippi John Hurt. Aretha Franklin. Stevie Wonder. The Beatles. The Rolling Stones. Norman Greenbaum. Ocean. Donovan.

I manage to get in a word elsewhere, such as here. And here.