Quote:
Originally Posted by Mean Mr. Mustard
Sorry but what? Greed is purely Christian?
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WOAH! HOLD YOUR HORSES! I DIDN'T SAY ANYTHING OF THE KIND!!! Actually, many Christians DISLIKE the Santa Clause tradition because of the greedy commercialism it leads to. And many Christians are able to still hold onto the religious aspects of Christmas without being caught up in the pure buying frenzy. What I was saying was that I cannot see the Muslim and Jewish communities embracing the concept of Santa Clause because they wouldn't want their children caught up in the extravagances of Christmas that many Christian children already are.
Let me give a personal example. When I was a child of 9 or thereabouts, my dad used to tease my brother and I. He would say that Santa wasn't coming this year because he was going to spend his time this year helping the poor kids that didn't have enough to eat. We were barely middle class, but we had enough. Atari 2600 on a B/W TV, Commodore 64, first on our block to have a VCR (Beta)... we got by better than most. He would have us near in tears thinking that Santa was going to skip our house to help poor children. We had been conditioned to believe that Christmas was all about recieving stuff. Seeing Santa in the mall wasn't about about meeting a nice jolly elf. Talking to Santa was about getting STUFF. We didn't appreciate how lucky we were compared to others. Like I said, I think Christmas has become two separate entities; the Christian ideal of helping the less fortunate and the Santa ideal of helping ourselves. And our dad was trying to see which side of the line we fell on and we failed every year.