07th Dec 2006
Ms. Theologian Takes on the Big Red Guy
Dear Ms. Theologian,
I am annoyed. 
At last year’s ‘holiday’
work party, I coordinated the appearance of Santa (a current employee dressed up.) I had asked two Jewish people and an atheist who were going to attend to see if they would be bothered before we did it. They laughed and said no. Santa helped out with a raffle we did and gave presents to the three heads of the company. However, the presents were representations of desires “Santa” felt they needed. Head 1 always runs around and is hard to approach, so he got duct tape to hold him in place. Head 2 got a tiny toy boat and “fairy dust” to grow his boat into a yacht (something he would be able to buy when the company makes a mint…) the Head 3 (also the CEO) got a box of toy army men to be able to “grow an army of dedicated employees.”
Fast forward…
This year, I asked Head 1 if Santa could appear. His response “… there were several people that were offended with the Santa ’suprise’ last year…There are people in this company that do not celebrate with the concept of Santa and it especially makes them feel uncomfortable when they have their loved ones put into a forced Santa situation.” The CONCEPT OF SANTA? Does that mean the celebration of joy, giving, peace, sharing, CONSUMERISM? What the heck? Santa hasn’t been a religious figure in probably 100 years! Give me a break!
So I come to you to see if you can make sense of what he is talking about. I give up. I don’t even want to attend the party, but feel I should go just to see what they do.
Sincerely,
Been Scrooged
Dear Scrooged:
First, GhostGirl doesn’t like Santa either. We can blame her and your CEO for this fine mess. Also, I apologize for shortening your letter somewhat.
Second, you’re not going to like the rest of my answer. Again, feel free to blame GhostGirl and your CEO.
Santa may not be a “religious figure” in the same sense that “Jesus Christ” is a religious figure, in that he’s not intrinsically a part of scripture, but he definitely is a religious figure. He doesn’t visit in the middle of July and break your legs for flirting with his sister. He comes on Christmas Eve to give presents for Christmas, the birth of Jesus. Like the Wise Guys. I mean, Wise Men.
Santa’s importance has increased in the history of Christmas. Though Santa is as much an invention of writers and illustrators as an actual saint (Saint Nicholas of Myra in the fourth century, to be precise), he is now at least the understudy for Christmas (in case Christ gets a sore throat and can’t show up). There’s a story that Santa was invented by Coke, but that simply isn’t true. He was based on a saint, and then riffed upon by writers. And here we are.
So, in Ms. Theologian’s opinion, if the holiday party is supposed to be non-religious than the Big Red Guy can’t be there. Ms. Theologian offers you some baklava instead. She knows that you like holidays a lot and that you put a lot of effort into party planning.
So what’s really going on at work? Ms. Theologian suspects that it’s not the Jews and atheists (Ms. Theologian absolutely does not think it’s a good sign when we start blaming the Jews and atheists as the CEO did for not allowing the party.) Ms. Theologian suspects that it may be an issue of the CEO wanting to control things more (and cut down on surprises in his life). She thinks that he wasn’t into Santa, so he pulled the plug.
The problem with not going to the party is that it’s sort of in the same school as kids who take their toys and go home if you don’t want to play with them the right way. This never happened to Ms. Theologian as she was so poor growing up she didn’t have toys, only frozen foods, which she pushed around the floor and pretended they were her dollies. Ahem. In any case, you should go, stay for an hour, have some appetizers, drink one drink, talk to people you don’t normally talk to, including the CEO, and then go home.
–Ms. Theologian
P.S. If you’d like to write to Ms. Theologian, send an email to ms dot theologian at gmail dot com.
