INTRODUCTION

THE SANTA CLAUS CANON

I am a big fan of the BBC science fiction show Doctor Who. Since 1963, there have been 12 Doctors in over 200 stories. One amazing things about that show is how consistent it has remained. Certainly, there have been many changes but the fundamentals of the story have stayed the same despite the fact that there have been many writers, directors, and producers. One of the things that has helped the millions of fans who have established a canon of TV episodes, movies, books, and even comic book that are thought to be official, i.e. canonical. This canon has at times been challenged but never really broken. The canon has produced a sense of continuity to the Doctor's story. There are certain things that will always and forever remain true.

The same cannot be said about Santa Claus. I am not talking about the historical Saint Nicholas, Bishop of Myra. That is indeed the origin of the stories. This connection between Saint Nicholas Bishop of Myra and Santa Claus is that Santa Claus is the embodiment of Saint Nicholas' benevolence. Saint Nicholas died on December 6, 343 CE (December 19 on the Julian calendar used in the East). Nevertheless, his embodiment, St Nick/Santa Claus, reappeared in northern Europe. In most of the West, there is very little connection between Saint Nicholas of Myra and our Santa. In this blog, I keep the Bishop and Santa separate and am exclusively talking about the latter.

At its core, the problem of Santa is that there is no collections of stories, books, myths, movies, TV shows, or any other art form that can be seen as the Santa Claus Canon.  Over the last few decades, it seems that anyone can create new “facts” about Santa. Some of these new stories do conform to the spirit of Santa. However, many do not. Since a Canon is a set of commonly believed statements on a subject, that is where we should begin. The rest of this paper attempts to spell out this canon. 

When I first conceived this blog, I thought I would offer my thoughts about what should and should not be included in a Santa Claus Canon.  I really do not want to place too tight of restrictions on what is included. Why should there be a limit to the creativity surrounding Santa Claus?  Each year, there are any number of new movies and made for TV specials that do not really conform to my idea of Santa and/or Christmas.  But why is that wrong?  For a couple of centuries, the images and myths of Santa was always been in flux. I have concluded that this flux is okay. Just recently my grandchildren made me realize that some of my ideas about Santa were not theirs.  Their favorite Santa movie I would say is in no way canonical; they would disagree.  When they are my age, that movie will be one of their "Christmas essentials." We do not need to place limits (and really cannot do so) on people's imaginations about the old elf.

Nevertheless, we must try!