Santa, Deconstructed

[Stuckinthebush]

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/derek-nystrom/santa-deconstructed_b_788541.html

I am not a professional Santa. Every December 24th, though, I am enlisted by my mother to play Santa -- red suit, white beard, pillow-expanded stomach and all -- for my cousins' children during our extended family's Christmas Eve celebrations. You would think that my day job would have little relevance to this position: I'm a professor of cultural studies, which means I teach undergraduates about critical theories concerning the relationship of popular culture to the structures of power in advanced capitalist democracies. Madonna videos are frequently involved.

A few years ago, though, something my cousin's daughter Lauren said made me wonder if my chosen profession was so irrelevant to my amateur Santa-ing. Lauren, who was then 11, had recently figured out that Santa is not real, so she asked her mother, in a knowing tone of voice, if "Santa" would be coming this year. She actually did that scare-quote thing with her hands. (I'm not sure what sort of cultural Rubicon we have crossed when 11-year-olds are already using ironic hand gestures, but apparently that's where we are.)

This slightly unnerving experience made me realize that the childhood experience of Santa is actually one that enacts, in miniature, the various stages of our gradual recognition of and acquiescence to contemporary forms of power and authority. No, seriously, it does. Here's how:

<snip>

I enjoyed this article. A fun deconstruction of Santa.

[flying rabbit]

1. cute n/t

[alturn]

2. the mundane always obscures the real

I was in a crown chakra meditation in Berkeley a few years back and the facilitator, Benjamin Creme, indicated at one point that the energies coming through at one particular point was that of Christ consciousness. At that moment, I could see out of the top of my head a field of red-and-white that was filled with the most beautiful, pure, refined field of love that I have ever experienced. I had read earlier that at the crown the field of Christ consciousness was red-and-white so it correlated. Hence it is no surprise that the primary colors of Christmas are red and white.

Ageless Wisdom Teachings state that the Lord of the World is Sanat Kamura, which is close to Santa Claus. Ancient tradition says there was a time when he walked the earth and one of the gifts He gave was yule logs. Another tradition - the christmas tree - correlates to a high state of awareness where the single eye looks out the brow through an inverted christmas-tree.

So in all the external forms and traditions sometimes there are clues to esoteric, ageless truth that through the ages are obscured by the finite minds and perspectives of men.