David Russell Mosley

Advent
14 December 2016
The Edge of Elfland
Hudson, New Hampshire

Dear Readers,

A few days ago a man called David Grisham went to Amarillo’s Westgate Mall to tell children in line to get their picture taken with Santa Claus that Santa is not real and that the reason we celebrate Christmas is because of Jesus. The words I wish to use to describe this gentleman and his actions are, I believe, quite accurate but, alas, are considered vulgar by many and so I will, in public, refrain from using them. But, as I did research into the man and his actions I learned things frankly even more frightening and disquieting. But allow me to set the stage for the even that led to this letter.

One day, as little children and their parents are lined up at a mall to see Santa and tell him what they want for Christmas, David Grisham shows up. Now, I’ll be the first to admit that meeting Santa in a Mall is both consumeristic and rather a giveaway to children. I mean you stand there, listen to what they want, while you’re in a mall, so you can go buy it. I am a proponent of Father Christmas, but there are practices I’d rather we leave behind. Still, I’d never walk into a mall and tell the mall Santa “You sit on a throne of lies.” So, Grisham shows up and begins to film himself. He describes himself as Pastor David Grisham. Grisham tells the children that Santa isn’t real, there is no Santa, the man you’re visiting is just a guy in a costume, and Jesus is the reason for the season. He then proceeds to call on the parents to stop lying to their children. As he rambles on several men, fathers of the children, come up to Grisham. One endeavors to gently remove Grisham. Grisham ends up sounding like a scolding parent, telling the gentleman to “Keep your hands to yourself.” Eventually Grisham leaves and tells everyone to have a nice day as the gently physical father reminds him, there is a Santa.

I cannot begin to imagine how the children and parents felt that day. Again, I have no desire to stand in line with my children and take them to a mall Santa. It rubs me the wrong way despite being a Father Christmas apologist of sorts. Still, I would be angry in a situation such as this. Hopefully, the children just thought a slightly crazy man, one who is to be pitied rather than feared or believed.  But let’s take a moment to examine the Pastor’s message.

He wants people to know that Christmas is about Christ. Good. I want people to know that too. He then says Santa is a lie. This is, of course, immensely complicated. What does he mean by this? Of course, he’s right that the man the children are visiting is just a guy in a costume. But Santa isn’t a lie. After all, as others have pointed out, Santa is short for Santa Claus which comes to us from the Dutch for Saint Nicholas. Saint Nicholas was very much a real person, who lived and died during the fourth century, and is renowned for his generosity as well as for his staunch defense of Christian orthodoxy against the heresy of Arianism. Then of course there is the fact that myths are not lies. The myth of Father Christmas or Santa Claus is not a lie even if it is not the case that there is a person who lives in the North Pole with his various helpers (usually of both fairy and animal kind) and who delivers presents to children between the evening of Christmas Eve and the morning of Christmas Day. Yet there is truth in all this. After all, even the child who wakes up with no toys Christmas morning (which is a tragedy we as Christians should seek to undo) they still wake up with the gift of their existence, even if it doesn’t feel like a gift that day. There is certainly, as Chesterton would remind us, a sense in which we can thank Father Christmas for the gift of two legs to put in our stockings.

This would seem enough to refute the inane claims of this pastor until I discovered the group he leads and the central theology to their mission. Grisham heads a group called Repent Amarillo. They are a Westboro Baptist-esque group who use the theory of spiritual mapping. Now, spiritual mapping is still new to me, so bear with me if I make any mistakes concerning it here. Spiritual mapping is a theory developed by C. Peter Wagner in the early nineties. It uses some unknown, to me, method of research and prayer to discover individuals or geographic places in need of exorcism. Now, I suspect that I would disagree heavily with the methodology in place to discover the possessed persons and places, particularly as it seems to include the destruction of Christian statues and icons of the saints. Still, I am fascinated.

This way of viewing the world is not wildly inaccurate. Spiritual mapping functions under the belief that spiritual reality undergirds our physical reality. This is almost precisely the theology behind notions of relics, religious statues, icons, blessed objects, sacraments, sacramental ontology, etc. A good Christian understanding of reality includes the fact that what we see around us participates in something deeper, something truer. This is the point of the twin works by Denys, The Celestial and The Ecclesiastical Hierarchies. The ecclesiastical hierarchy is a shadow of, a participant in, the angelic or celestial hierarchy. And I think it quite likely that alongside these good aspects are evil ones. I believe the demons have less power than the angels, since they are evil and pulled themselves further away from the Good and thus from being, but I still believe them to be active. And yet, Repent Amarillo, and spiritual mapping in general, seems to focus entirely on evil. I think this is one of the great mistakes of, if not Charismatic or Pentecostal groups in specific, then much of modern spiritually aware Christianity in general. We get so wrapped up in the reality of evil spiritual forces we forget that there are good ones too, and that the good ones not only outnumber the evil but are more real than the evil.

So what are we to do with the David Grisham’s and the Repent Amarillo’s understanding of the world? Initially, I would have suggested ignore them, but that isn’t good enough. We cannot simply ignore them. After all, the look at the myth of modernity and find it lacking and so present an alternative narrative, in this case one founded on spiritual mapping. Instead, we must out-narrate them. We must show why our own understanding of reality is not only Truer than theirs, but that it is better (in the sense that it better aligns with the Good), and that it is more Beautiful. We must show why Christianity can have room for both the birth of Christ and the coming of Father Christmas; why Christianity can celebrate the birth of a poor baby to a poor family with feasting and gift giving. We must out narrate them. And this is true not only for the Repent Amarillo’s and Westboro Baptist’s of the world, but the modernists, the secularists. We must show Christianity’s truth by showing them the goodness and beauty of the Gospel. This is our calling. This is the joy of the Gospel.

Sincerely,
David