Naughty or Nice

It’s Yuletide, and this year I’m invoking one of my least favorite parts of the Christmas mythology.
I think of it as the Nicholas Spy Agency. Santa as the Deep State.

He sees you when you’re sleeping
He knows when you’re awake
He knows when you’ve been bad or good
So be good for goodness’ sake!

Now let me state at the outset that, though I have no children of my own, I’ve watched over small children many times in my life. Hence, I sympathize with the impulse that probably led to the writing and certainly led to the popularity of this song. Having a quick way to shut down a tantrum in the middle of the mall must seem like a godsend around Christmas—or any other time, really. The beauty of the idea is that it creates an incentive to the child not to blow a gasket basically year-round—and it deflects any irritation the child may feel at being asked to choose between the pleasure of toys and the pleasure of a temper tantrum onto a mythological being.
Like I said, in the middle of a crowded store, with a screaming five-year-old in tow, it must seem like a godsend.

And Bruce Springsteen did a spanking good version of the song:

But it’s an ugly idea nonetheless. Whether you take Santa back to his Christian or pagan origins, he is clearly a figure of generosity and kindness, especially to children. I believe, with no evidence whatsoever, that there is a third figure, along with St. Nicholas the Christian church father

and the god Odin riding Sleipnir through the midwinter night,

that goes into the makeup of Santa.

There seems to be a kind midwinter god of plenty, generosity and charity back there. You can see him in the King Wenceslas myth, where his kindness is extended not only to children, but to those made helpless by poverty. (The great thing about that story is that the saint not only embodies kindness himself, but gives strength and courage to other people so that they may persist in doing good.)

Sire, the night grows darker now
And the wind grows stronger
Fails my heart I know not how
I can go no longer

Mark my footsteps, my good page
Tread thou in them boldly,
Thou shalt find the winter’s rage
Freeze thy blood less coldly.

I think the same mythical fellow turns up in Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol as the Ghost of Christmas Present:

It was his own room. There was no doubt about that. But it had undergone a surprising transformation. The walls and ceiling were so hung with living green, that it looked a perfect grove; from every part of which, bright gleaming berries glistened. The crisp leaves of holly, mistletoe, and ivy reflected back the light, as if so many little mirrors had been scattered there; and such a mighty blaze went roaring up the chimney, as that dull petrification of a hearth had never known in Scrooge's time, or Marley's, or for many and many a winter season gone. Heaped up on the floor, to form a kind of throne, were turkeys, geese, game, poultry, brawn, great joints of meat, sucking-pigs, long wreaths of sausages, mince-pies, plum-puddings, barrels of oysters, red-hot chestnuts, cherry-cheeked apples, juicy oranges, luscious pears, immense twelfth-cakes, and seething bowls of punch, that made the chamber dim with their delicious steam. In easy state upon this couch, there sat a jolly Giant, glorious to see, who bore a glowing torch, in shape not unlike Plenty's horn, and held it up, high up, to shed its light on Scrooge, as he came peeping round the door.

`Come in.' exclaimed the Ghost. `Come in, and know me better, man.

To take the figure that embodies these qualities and turn him into an omniscient invisible judge who keeps lists that divide bad people from good is a pretty nasty cultural gesture. It introduces the idea of deserving things into what was once unfettered generosity—generosity that shone a light amid the darkness and privation of midwinter.

Have we not eaten while others starved? Will you condemn us for that? Will you praise us for the virtue of starving while others ate? Free your mind of the idea of deserving, the idea of earning, and you will begin to be able to think.

---Ursula LeGuin
The Dispossessed

I bring up the Nicholas Spy Agency because it’s struck me lately how much of our cultural discourse, and how much of our political discourse in particular, is driven by the desire to place blame. American politics is now little more than an argument over who’s at fault. I guess that’s what happens when politics abdicates its function of improving life for humanity and even abandons its obligation to administer the current system in as organized, rational, and fair manner as possible. Blame thrives in such a moral vacuum. When you abandon the notion of right action as a possibility, there’s little left but a moral Scylla and Charybdis to choose from. You can crash on the rocks by demonizing others, or get dragged down in a whirlpool of sociopathic nihilism. What else has the interminable Democratic primary been about?

At the same time, I guess I believe there is a place for blame; I certainly don’t think that people should simply be able to, as Arlo Guthrie once put it, burn women kids houses and villages, without any comment or remonstration from the rest of the human community. And when you talk about wrecking whole planets, it seems there must be some way of placing blame. Otherwise, the very idea that there’s anything wrong with taking a living planet and turning it into a dead one disappears. Can you have a notion of right and wrong without a notion of blame?

Maybe the problem comes when blame starts to run the show, when it becomes the sole currency of politics and the fundamental axis of relationship. Or maybe the problem comes from the fact that, unmoored from a real desire to improve the lives of human beings, blame becomes a distorted shadow of its former self. Or maybe the problem is that, in order to have a socially useful concept of blame, you must, at the very least, have a nodding acquaintance with accuracy and truth.

What do you think?

Whatever you think, I wish you all a good holiday season.