As some of you may have guessed, my thoughts on Christmas are a little conflicted. It's not like I have a vendetta against it like some people think. I mean, good for them. They managed to co-opt the solstice celebration. I'm not crazy about it, but it's not like I don't put up a tree and a few wreaths.

The thing that drives me nuts is the Santa Claus thing. Namely the notion that I invented Santa Claus to take the spotlight off Jesus during his birthday. Some say his name is "Santa" because it's just "Satan" with the "N" placed in front of the "T". I feel slightly insulted by the notion that I can turn into a serpent on a whim and tempt Eve out of paradise, but that when concocting a campaign to influence every Christian child in the world for hundreds of years I would just spell my name with a few letters switched around.

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That being said, boy do I wish I had thought of that. If I were half as crafty as the Fox News crowd thinks I am I'd be the COO of Heaven by now, and I sure as hell wouldn't have ended up with this job. You think I want to spend all day sticking hot pokers in people's nostrils because they ate meat on a Friday in 1927? So I laugh a little when I hear the Santa thing.

I imagine it's how the Coen brothers feel when they hear the theory that Donnie is a figment of Walter's imagination in The Big Lebowski. I'd love for this to be true, but the scene when the Dude is walking away while the phone's ringing and Donnie says "Phone's ringing, Dude" and the Dude responds? That kinda kills the idea, not to mention the scene when they're (SPOILER ALERT!!!!) claiming his ashes.

The dead giveaway with Santa is that if he is in fact meant to pull the attention off Jesus, he's doing it by acting nice, and that's not really my style. At the moment, Santa Claus rewards niceness and punishes naughtiness. That implies that at some point I would switch gears from the distraction phase (now) and move into the actually-doing-evil phase. I'm all evil, all the time. My attitude is "I'm here, I'm Satan, please indulge in some sinning". I'm always willing to facilitate any sinning you want to do, and frankly, I don't really need to sell it, or make it look like it's something that it's not. People really like sins. If you were selling acid at a Phish show, would you make it look like Listerine fresh strips? Didn't think so.

So why make Santa look nice? I'm not saying I'm above deception, but why bother? Adults who are overly friendly to kids are creepy anyway. People love Tony Soprano, they hate clowns. Hell, there's a Wikipedia page called "Evil Clown". So anyway, I didn't invent Santa.


OR DID I...?! No, seriously, I didn't.