Is Santa Claus The Antichrist

Santa has usurped Christ's role at Christmas time. Most people only think of Santa and materialistic things instead of thinking about Christ and spiritual matters.

The world's becoming more irreligious and yet Santa is becoming more important with his materialistic message, imo

I'm convinced that if the Antichrist exists then Santa is it.



[Edited on 12-11-2003 by Aztec]

Why make children believe in lies at such a young age? In reality it's not something fun to teach them. Just think, in two days so many parents around the world will be telling the future to lay down and sleep while a man in a RED suit creeps into the house to reward them with gifts cause they were good all year. That strips the parents right to be the one to reward.

Santa, in his current guise, was conceived by the good marketing men at Coca-Cola, if i am not mistaken, so connections with the anti-christ may not be so wide of the mark.

However the true spirit of santa probably exists as some sort of archetype which will probably be vey hard to dispel.

[Edited on 23-12-2003 by KhieuSamphan]

[Edited on 23-12-2003 by KhieuSamphan]

The sleigh was all packed, the reindeer were fed,
But Santa still knelt by the side of the bed.

"Dear Father," he prayed "Be with me tonight.
There's much work to do and my schedule is tight.

I must jump in my sleigh and streak through the sky,
Knowing full well that a reindeer can't fly.


I will visit each household before the first light,
I'll cover the world and all in one night.

With sleigh bells a-ringing, I'll land on each roof,
Amid the soft clatter of each little hoof.


To get in the house is the difficult part,
So I'll slide down the chimney of each child's heart.

My sack will hold toys to grant all their wishes.
The supply will be endless like the loaves and the fishes.

I will fill all the stockings and not leave a track.
I'll eat every cookie that is left for my snack.

I can do all these things Lord, only through You,
I just need your blessing, then it's easy to do.


All this is to honor the birth of the One,
That was sent to redeem us, Your most Holy Son.

So to all of my friends, least Your glory I rob,
Please Lord, remind them who gave me this job."
--Warren D. Jennings

I see nothing wrong with maintaining a little fantasy and magic in a child's life...perfectly harmless, especially if the child is taught the backstory of Santa Claus....

Well...if you mix up the letters in santa you get satan. How much more proof do you people need!

Santa Claus is the antichrist. Does that make the Easter Bunny a nominee for that also? How about the Tooth Fairy? Come on. If there is an antichrist, and I personally believe thats a load of...well...anyway, if there was, I'd be more inclined to say its George Warmonger Bush than Santie Claus.

I wouldn't be surprised if that psycho Pat Robertson started saying this.

I enjoy Christmas. I love putting presents out on Christmas Day for our children to open, telling them it came from Santa. Same goes for the Tooth Fairy, St. Nick and the Easter Bunny.

Nothing wrong with mixing a little fantasy with the real world. There are enough problems nowadays for kids to worry about. A little harmless fantasy won't hurt them.

It didn't hurt me.

Santa is Satan, with the letters mixed up? Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't Santa Spanish for Saint? Unless the Spaniards and all the poeple in South and Central America(including Mexico) are involved in some kin of satanist conspiracy, this statement was rather lame.

Note: unless you're that guy from the movie SILENT NIGHT DEADLY NIGHT. Santa really ruined him for life, hehe

(Yeah, I know, I said I was going to be gone, but I am working from a laptop )

ANYWAYS! Santa Claus is NOT the antichrist. Santa Claus WAS a marketing stunt for Coca Cola, but the REAL Santa Claus: i.e, Saint Nicolas, who IS a saint, is definately not the antichrist. Saint Nick used to bring presents and food to poor children, IE the gift giving thing. So no, Santa Claus is a character, a character for the imagination, the spirit of Santa Claus is good. (Giving is better than receiving) How antichrist does that sound to you? Anti means against Christ, that sure doesn't sound against him.

-wD

Nice poem makesugohmmmm.
Santa is the least of the worlds troubles.
Besides everyone knows the true meaning of Christmas. Santa is for kids.
Maybe in 2012 when Satan Claws comes and destroys the world, I'll agree with you. Til then, Happy Xmas.

who decided who was a saint, and who wasn't? the vatican.
what did they used to call the devil? ol' nick.
who started this whole thing?
a coke dealing company.
i don't believe in the antichrist as a person, but as a force.
yes satan lucas is anti christ, in my opinion.

i remember one year we awoke to find sleigh tracks in my front yard, as well as some kind of hoofed footprints in the fresh snow, as well as some flat soled boots leading to my front door and back. back then, my parents may have lied to me, but now im sure that when they told me they didnt do it and dont know how it happened, and that the neighbors didnt do it, i believe them. someone playing a prank no doubt, but fun to consider.

edit: i find it quite offensive that santa is portrayed as evil in that picture, and what does he have in his mouth but a fat cone. (joint) how much lower can they go?

^not directed at any person in this thread

[Edited on 23-12-2003 by forsakenwayfarer]

Coca-Cola didn't create the modern model of Father Christman, it was the poet who wrote the "not a creature was stirring, not even a mouse" in the 1830s methinks (twas on TV tonight )

Originally posted by billybob
who decided who was a saint, and who wasn't? the vatican.
what did they used to call the devil? ol' nick.
who started this whole thing?
a coke dealing company.
i don't believe in the antichrist as a person, but as a force.
yes satan lucas is anti christ, in my opinion.

I've never heard satan be referred to as "'ol nick" I've heard 'Ol Scratch but not 'ol nick.

And what is satan lucas?

Originally posted by Aztec

Santa has usurped Christ's role at Christmas time. Most people only think of Santa and materialistic things instead of thinking about Christ and spiritual matters.

The world's becoming more irreligious and yet Santa is becoming more important with his materialistic message, imo



I'm convinced that if the Antichrist exists then Santa is it.

[Edited on 12-11-2003 by Aztec]

That's crazy. If people need a Holiday to worship God then they are not true believers. God should be worshed EVERYDAY, Not xmas, easter or whatever the Holiday is. I don't even acknowledge xmas as a religious day I give prestents and stuff, but I don't calibrate the pagan holiday.

Well, there was the Dyslexic Devil Worshipper who sold his soul to Santa!!

*crickets*

Tough crowd.

*slinks away*

Originally posted by KhieuSamphan
Santa, in his current guise, was conceived by the good marketing men at Coca-Cola, if i am not mistaken, so connections with the anti-christ may not be so wide of the mark.

Rock on man, the same way as Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer was the brainchild of *i think* Montgomery Ward. Fables spun by large corporations for marketing, nothing more.

it's true that Coca-Cola fashoined the modern image of Santa Clause, but the image of a secret round red and white elf with a package under a conifer tree is ancient.shaman santa

Originally posted by herm
it's true that Coca-Cola fashoined the modern image of Santa Clause, but the image of a secret round red and white elf with a package under a conifer tree is ancient.shaman santa

Coca-Cola didn't create that image, they just popularized it.

From Snopes.com

Claim: The modern image of Santa Claus � a jolly figure in a red-and-white suit � was created by Coca-Cola.

Status: False.

Example: [Twitchell, 2000]


The jolly old St. Nick that we know from countless images did not come from folklore, nor did he originate in the imaginations of Moore and Nast. He comes from the yearly advertisements of the Coca-Cola Company. He wears the corporate colors � the famous red and white � for a reason: he is working out of Atlanta, not out of the North Pole.


Origins: Santa
Claus is perhaps the most remarkable of all the figures associated with Christmas. To us, Santa has always been an essential part of the Christmas celebration, but the modern image of Santa didn't develop until well into the 19th century. Moreover, he didn't spring to life fully-formed as a literary creation or a commercial invention (as did his famous reindeer, Rudolph). Santa Claus was an evolutionary creation, brought about by the fusion of two religious personages (St. Nicholas and Christkindlein, the Christ child) to become a fixed image which is now the paramount symbol of the secular Christmas celebration.

In 1804, the New York Historical Society was founded with Nicholas as its patron saint, its members reviving the Dutch tradition of St. Nicholas as a gift-bringer. In 1809, Washington Irving published his satirical A History of New York, by one "Diedrich Knickerbocker," a work that poked fun at New York's Dutch past (St. Nicholas included). When Irving became a member of the Society the following year, the annual St. Nicholas Day dinner festivities included a woodcut of the traditional Nicholas figure (tall, with long robes) accompanied by a Dutch rhyme about "Sancte Claus" (in Dutch, "Sinterklaas"). Irving revised his History of New York in 1812, adding details about Nicholas' "riding over the tops of the trees, in that selfsame waggon wherein he brings his yearly presents to children." In 1821, a New York printer named William Gilley issued a poem about a "Santeclaus" who dressed all in fur and drove a sleigh pulled by one reindeer. Gilley's "Sante," however, was very short.

On Christmas Eve of 1822, another New Yorker, Clement Clarke Moore, wrote down and read to his children a series of verses; his poem was published a year later as "An Account of a Visit from St. Nicholas" (more commonly known today by its opening line, "'Twas the night before Christmas . . ."). Moore gave St. Nick eight reindeer (and named them all), and he devised the now-familiar entrance by chimney. Moore's Nicholas was still a small figure, however � the poem describes a "miniature sleigh" with a "little old driver."

Meanwhile, in parts of Europe such as Germany, Nicholas the gift-giver had been superseded by a representation of the infant Jesus (the Christ child, or "Christkindlein"). The Christkindlein accompanied Nicholas-like figures with other names (such as "P�re N�el" in France), or he travelled with a dwarf-like helper (known in some places as "Pelznickel," or Nicholas with furs). Belsnickle (as Pelznickel was known in the German-American dialect of Pennsylvania) was represented by adults who dressed in furry disguises (including false whiskers), visited while children were still awake, and put on a scary performance. Gifts found by children the next morning were credited to Christkindlein, who had come while everyone was asleep. Over time, the non-visible Christkindlein (whose name mutated into "Kriss Kringle") was overshadowed by the visible Belsnickle, and both of them became confused with St. Nicholas and the emerging figure of Santa Claus.

The modern Santa Claus derived from these two images: St. Nicholas the elf-like gift bringer described by Moore, and a friendlier "Kriss Kringle" amalgam of the Christkindlein and Pelznickel figures. The man-sized version of Santa became the dominant image around 1841, when a Philadelphia merchant named J.W. Parkinson hired a man to dress in "Criscringle" clothing and climb the chimney outside his shop.

In 1863, a caricaturist for Harper's Weekly named Thomas Nast began developing his own image of Santa. Nast gave his figure a "flowing set of whiskers" and dressed him "all in fur, from his head to his foot." Nast's 1866 montage entitled "Santa Claus and His Works" established Santa as a maker of toys; an 1869 book of the same name collected new Nast drawings with a poem by George P. Webster that identified the North Pole as Santa's home. Although Nast never settled on one size for his Santa figures (they ranged from elf-like to man-sized), his 1881 "Merry Old Santa Claus" drawing is quite close to the modern-day image.

The Santa Claus figure, although not yet standardized, was ubiquitous by the late 19th century. Santa was portrayed as both large and small; he was usually round but sometimes of normal or slight build; and he dressed in furs (like Belsnickle) or cloth suits of red, blue, green, or purple. A Boston printer named Louis Prang introduced the English custom of Christmas cards to America, and in 1885 he issued a card featuring a red-suited Santa. The chubby Santa with a red suit (like an "overweight superhero") began to replace the fur-dressed Belsnickle image and the multicolored Santas.

At the beginning of the 1930s, the burgeoning Coca-Cola company was still looking for ways to increase sales of their product during winter, then a slow time of year for the soft drink market. They turned to a talented commercial illustrator named Haddon Sundblom, who created a series of memorable drawings that associated the figure of a larger than life, red-and-white garbed Santa Claus with Coca-Cola. Coke's annual advertisements � featuring Sundblom-drawn Santas holding bottles of Coca-Cola, drinking Coca-Cola, receiving Coca-Cola as gifts, and especially enjoying Coca-Cola � became a perennial Christmastime feature which helped spur Coca-Cola sales throughout the winter (and produced the bonus effect of appealing quite strongly to children, an important segment of the soft drink market). The success of this advertising campaign has helped fuel the legend that Coca-Cola actually invented the image of the modern Santa Claus, decking him out in a red-and-white suit to promote the company colors � or that at the very least, Coca-Cola chose to promote the red-and-white version of Santa Claus over a variety of competing Santa figures in order to establish it as the accepted image of Santa Claus.

This legend is not true. Although some versions of the Santa Claus figure still had him attired in various colors of outfits past the beginning of the 20th century, the jolly, ruddy, sack-carrying Santa with a red suit and flowing white whiskers had become the standard image of Santa Claus by the 1920s, several years before Sundlom drew his first Santa illustration for Coca-Cola. As The New York Times reported on 27 November 1927:

A standardized Santa Claus appears to New York children. Height, weight, stature are almost exactly standardized, as are the red garments, the hood and the white whiskers. The pack full of toys, ruddy cheeks and nose, bushy eyebrows and a jolly, paunchy effect are also inevitable parts of the requisite make-up.
It's simply mind-boggling that at the beginning the 21st century, historians are still egregiously perpetuating inaccurate information like the following:

So complete was the colonization of Christmas that Coke's Santa had elbowed aside all comers by the 1940s. He was the Santa of the 1947 movie Miracle on 34th Street just as he is the Santa of the recent film The Santa Clause. He is the Santa on Hallmark cards, he is the Santa riding the Norelco shaver each Christmas season, he is the department-store Santa, and he is even the Salvation Army Santa!1
As we just pointed out above, the modern Santa had "elbowed aside all comers" long before the 1940s, and well before Coca-Cola co-opted him as their wintertime advertising symbol. And we're at a loss to understand how anyone could have recognized the Santa of Miracle on 34th Street, a BLACK-AND-WHITE film, as the red-and-white Coca-Cola Santa.

All this isn't to say that Coca-Cola didn't have anything to do with cementing that image of Santa Claus in the public consciousness. The Santa image may have been standardized before Coca-Cola adopted it for their advertisements, but Coca-Cola had a great deal to do with establishing Santa Claus as a ubiquitous Christmas figure in America at a time when the holiday was still making the transition from a religious observance to a largely secular and highly commercial celebration. In an era before color television (or commercial television of any kind), color films, and the widespread use of color in newspapers, it was Coca-Cola's magazine advertisements, billboards, and point-of-sale store displays that exposed nearly everyone in America to the modern Santa Claus image. Coca-Cola certainly helped make Santa Claus one of the most popular men in America, but they didn't invent him.

[Edited on 12/23/03 by NotTooHappy]

From Aztec>

I'm convinced that if the Antichrist exists then Santa is it.

You sure it's not the pope,President Putin of Russia or maybe
even George Bush?
They have all been identified by some as the anti-christ.

As for Santa Claus and christmas it's simply a commercial
enterprise for the big department stores.
Christmas is big business and worth millions of dollars,pesos,francs,pounds or whatever currency they use.
The bright optimistic side of this is simply this.
It only occurs once a year instead of two ,three or more.

Would you like to get yourself killed or assassinated?
Try launching a nationwide or international movement to
have this holiday banned completely.
You will have a big dangerous conspiracy movement after
your butt to kill you.
The ones behind this will be obvious.
The big department stores like Macy's,Mervyns,Walmart and other big corporations who benefit and make a killing
during this crass holiday.
I suspect that more people are put in debt around this time than any other part of the year.
Think how much profit credit card companies make because
of Xmas.

Santa is their sacred cow and woe unto the infidel or the
barbaric heathen who dare to do away with him and the holiday.

Either that you must be some kind of anti-capitalist commie
if you oppose this lucrative source of wealth for the big businesses.