But why do I call Santa a god? Because he has many things in common with gods of polytheistic religions:

• He has his own cult, the Santa-Winter-Gift cult, only loosely related to christian christmas and followed by christians and atheists alike. This cult includes rituals like the hanging of stockings at the chimney.


• People pray to him - particularly children via "letters to Santa".


• He fits into the archetype of the beardy patriarch god, pretty much like Zeus/Jupiter, Odin/Wotan as well as god the father in many christian paintings.


• He is responsible for some aspect of reality, in his case gifts and brumal cozyness. (For me this is very strange - in my time, frost and snow are things that kill people.)


• He has his own lore: The home at the north pole, the little elves, the reindeer sledge... Much of this lore seem to go back to the poem "A Visit from St. Nicholas" and the children's book "The Life and Adventures of Santa Claus".


• He travels over the sky on his sledge, like Helios on his sun-chariot or most other sun deities.


• He has familiars (reindeers and elves), like many of his cogods.


• He is said to live in a distant place which is almost inaccessible for mortals, pretty much like the heavens, Asgard or Mount Olympus.


• He has his own holiday - for now shared with Baby Jesus, but for many, Christmas is a Santa holiday rather than a Jesus holiday.

The funny thing is that Santa is shaped after a typically american archetype: The Gentle Old Business Magnate. Scrooge McDuck, Colonel Sanders, Ebenezer Scrooge (who becomes gentle in the Dickens' novella), to name just some examples. Even Steve Jobs played this role (even if his gentleness is doubted). Santa fits perfectly into this archetype: He runs an offshore toy factory, he operates worldwide and has seemingly unlimited resources, he gives gifts to children, and he has a fluffy white beard.

The question is: How comes that in the western world, in particular in oh-so-christian America, christian Christmas gets more and more pushed back by the neo-pagan Santa cult? My hypothesis is that Santa fits better to calvinist-capitalist America than Baby Jesus. (I might be biased, though - it's not a secret that I don't like Calvinists, or Huguenots as they were used to be called in France.)

See, Calvinism is based on the heretic doctrine of predestination: In plain English, God doesn't give a shit what you do, as he has already made his choice and won't change his mind, even if you give all your belongings to the poor. On the other side, it's important what you are, as earthly wealth and power are signs that you are one of God's choosen ones. In a nutshell, God loves the rich and hates the poor. (This is, of course, in contradiction with the gospels - maybe that's why hardcore Calvinists prefer to read the Old Testament and to refer to Jesus only in phrases like "Jesus loves..." and "Jesus hates...")

Of course, the poor baby Jesus, born in a barn or cattle cave, doesn't really fit into a society built upon the "God loves the rich" doctrine. If this Jesus was born like an illegal immigrant, lived like a hobo, preached love and poverty and died like a criminal, how can we put his birth into the center of the most popular holiday of the year? So it's only natural to replace the poor hobo baby Jesus by a new god, shaped after the Gentle Old Business Magnate archetype. In this new cult, baby Jesus becomes a mere accessory, one among other tales of the Santa cult lore.

Please keep in mind that I'm talking about Calvinist nutheads, and by extension about people directly or indirectly influenced by Calvinist doctrine - I'm not talking about all christian people or all US-Americans. Not everybody admires Gentle Old Business Magnates, not everybody worships Santa, the neo-pagan god of gifts and wealth, the come-back of Mammon.

You might wonder whether there are other modern gods in western culture. I don't know, but there is none than I knew of. Creatures like the tooth fairy or the Easter Bunny / Easter Hare are gentle house spirits rather than deities. Superheroes are clearly perceived as fictional and correspond to classical heros or half-gods rather than gods. Things like Internet or War on Terror lack personification. And attempted personifications in US society like Uncle Sam, Columbia or Lady Liberty (the latter being a French import) never made it beyond paintings, statues and postal stamps. And besides "traditional" deities like God, Allah or YHWH, no other supernatural being has such a huge cult as Santa has.

For now.