![\"Santa](\"https:\/\/wp-media.patheos.com\/blogs\/sites\/455\/2014\/12\/santhasis.jpg\")
<\/a>There\u2019s a reason for the season, and Santa it ain\u2019t. I can\u2019t help suspecting that our children think Santa expired on the Christmas tree for their gifts. I\u2019d like to blame them or myself (as some have already done<\/a>), but there are more powerful trends at work here.<\/p>\n The notion of competing cultural liturgies\u2013as developed by James K.A. Smith in Imagining the Kingdom<\/em><\/a>, William T. Cavanaugh in Migrations of the Holy<\/em><\/a>, and Bruce Ellis Benson Liturgy as a Way of Life<\/em><\/a>\u2013is especially legible in everyday life<\/a> during the Christmas season in the West.<\/p>\n The ubiquitous Santa liturgy (ads, Christmas decorations, TV shows, store fronts, etc) is there 24\/7 whether you want it or not. It clearly has the upper hand over the Baby Jesus liturgy (mostly swaddled in the tight confines<\/a> of churches).<\/p>\n The amount of exposure the former gets over the latter means God is devalued<\/a> not only in the imaginations<\/a> of children, but also adults.<\/p>\n The situation might seem like a reason for taking up the side of the cultural warriors<\/a> who would have us put Christ back in Christmas.<\/p>\n But no!<\/p>\n This would only lead to a strange dialectic whereby Baby Jesus would merely replace Santa in the middle of the frenzied capitalist liturgy of the season<\/a>.<\/p>\n Something of the sort can be readily observed in the writings of popular Catholic authors such as George Weigel<\/a> or Michael Novak<\/a>; for them exceptional American dynamism has usurped the wastefulness of Jesus<\/a> and his Church.<\/a><\/p>\n Sorry to poop on your post-gift opening party!<\/p>\n We opened ours last night, so I only have a vague, fading gift hangover going for me.<\/p>\n Anyway, until the advent<\/a> of an authentic culture of waste<\/a>, this must be it:<\/p>\n<\/a>