Well, this post may not be timely as Christmas has recently passed for 2011. But, I write them as I get them. Do you believe in Santa Claus? If you are a parent, do you practice the beliefs of the folk tales around the person called Santa Claus? I will not discuss the history of the Christmas figure as I could find sources that approve of including the folklore in a Christmas family tradition and sources calling the figure –“Satan Claus”. As for me, I did not pass on the “beliefs” to my children. This was decided in our family before our time at Word of Faith Fellowship (WOFF). The reasons are not important here. It would suffice to say I did not consider the tale to agree with what we wanted to pass on to our children. This did cause some angst when visiting relatives around the holiday. But, we got through it. And the practice was certainly obliterated during WOFF days as Jane Whaley led all members to disown the Christmas celebration altogether. Today, I began to view the Santa Claus beliefs from a totally new view point and I had to ask myself if I had passed on something much worse than Santa Claus to my children.
Today’s discussion did not start out on the attributes of Santa Claus. Actually, a friend and I were discussing the mystical “powers” proclaimed by certain “church leaders”; the topic included all the self-proclaimed revelations and seeming omnipotence of certain leaders. This friend was expressing their hesitation to deny the validity of certain spiritual practices. In essence, they were saying they did not want to “throw the baby out with the bath water”. So, we began a list of certain powers proclaimed by certain group leaders- some of leaders would be included as religious cult leaders…
Honestly, there were others in the discussion besides Jane Whaley. However, my experience has been mostly with WOFF, so, I will reference her in this post. The list included the assumed omnipotence of Jane, the assigned quality that she knew everything, and that no matter what you did – she would say whether it was “good or bad”. Suddenly I made a frightening connection. The words to a song popped into mind;