Since I wrote about the way people deceive their children about Santa Claus in Part 2 we have had an article in the local paper giving people advice on how to tell their children about Santa. They are advised to tell their children that Santa is a nice guy so that they aren’t scared when they are plunked on his lap.

Instead of threatening that Santa will ignore them if they don’t do their little chores we are advised to tell them that not cleaning up their room will made Santa sad, and that they may not get any new toys if the old ones are left scattered all over the floor.

Let’s investigate now what is known about a myth associated with Christmas that many people believed in, and were encouraged in that belief, until they grew up somewhat; I refer to Santa Claus, Father Christmas, Kris Kringle and others. It’s an amazing smorgasbord of interweaving stories and shows how stories can grow and spread out tentacles that become stories in their own right.

Christmas has been in our eyes and ears and pocket books since the day after Thanksgiving. So I thought to go once again into the labyrinth of the invention of Christmas and many of its current ramifications in the next few postings. It is a fascinating example of how a story continually told over many years becomes its own evidence. ‘Everybody knows’ is not evidence. Almost everyone in my favorite coffee house ‘knows’ a tremendous amount about Tiger Woods. None of them have ever met him, nor are they likely to meet him.

Everyone except a handful of enlightened beings hold firmly to one or more dogmas until they can reach higher perspectives. I have held to one in particular ever since I could read, round about the age of five. It is this: “Ye shall know the Truth, and the Truth shall make you free.” I found by experience that the quotation may have been incomplete. The ending should have been….” But first it will make you miserable.”