I was reading a post on Facebook about How to Disclose to your Kid That Santa does not exist materially.  (All that means is that, Santa can be considered to exist in some figurative sense, but Santa is not a person whom you can, well, give a real cookie to.  Unless you consider Santa to be yourself, in which case you're wasting my time, and you should go elsewhere.)

I did not read the post, because I wasn't interested enough, but from the first several comments I got the impression that it was well written.  But then I came across a comment that some people had always hated Santa Claus!

That really got me thinking!  Why would anyone hate Santa Claus?  I mean, as a symbol of all the over-the-top commercialism of the holiday season, certainly, one can be deeply annoyed at all that he represents!  But to me, Santa Claus constitutes the remnants of a medieval bishop who is generally considered to have been greatly loved in his lifetime, and was celebrated as a saint.  You can search the Internet for the origins of Santa Claus, and one of the strongest sources for the religious origins is this bishop of a town near Myra in Turkey, belonging to the Orthodox strain of Christianity.  Not being unduly religious, I did not look up the dates and the details, but they are not hard to find.

It seems to me that if you hate the commercialism in which people indulge during the holiday season, I think the commercialism should bear the full force of your hatred; Saint Nicholas and his memory should not suffer, surely?  This tendency to get upset over symbols is a weakness in our society.  Basically, I feel, people indulge in all this furious gift-giving at Christmas to compensate for neglecting their friends the rest of the year.  Then they get into the habit of giving expensive but unwanted gifts during the holiday season, and this sets everyone up for being thoroughly depressed because often the gifts don't come up to the expectations of the recipients, and . . . it's too depressing to even follow up on the causes of the depression.  I don't give very elaborate gifts; I'm very bad at doing the whole Christmas Presents thing.  I strongly believe in appreciating people, but I'm bad at showing my appreciation.  My appreciation of particular people is invisible most of them, because I put them in my stories, and they never find out that I have!

This year, especially, I'm feeling the need to appreciate certain people very much, because they wanted so much for the election to turn out differently, and they are intensely cut-up about the outcome.  Many of them wanted Bernie Sanders to be the Democratic Candidate, and simply could not cope with Hillary Clinton.  Others were delighted that Hillary earned the candidacy, and were stunned that D.T. beat her at the polls--or at least, in the electoral college.  There could be any number of surprises on December 19th, when the College assembles to vote, but most of us are going to be disappointed.  (I sincerely hope I'm wrong.)

Giving Christmas presents to these disappointed friends of mine are not going to make them feel a whole lot better about the election, but they will certainly be cheered up (I hope) that I thought of them this season.  If I can't find something for each of them that they would find useful or entertaining, I'll just keep the money and do something nice for them when the opportunity arises.

My students are just finishing their final examinations, and, as always happens, they will promptly proceed to forget that I ever existed.  It is rarely that a college kid remembers the instructors from their freshman courses, unless it is someone utterly charismatic (which I'm not).  A pox on charismatic professors, anyway; nobody taught me to be charismatic, and I think college students should learn to be inspired by non-charismatic professors, because sometimes these non-charismatic teachers have the best information.

So, in conclusion, I am definitely on board with consoling my friends with small, useful gifts this season, if I can find appropriate ones.

Kay