Santa Punching Arius & More Stupidity

The same stupidity fixing some Catholics into seeing Saint Nick as an MMA champion kills us with preventable disasters.

I was watching the new movie FATMAN the other day, starring Mel Gibson. As it went along, I kept thinking about so many young priests and seminarians I know who will eat this movie up, but completely miss it, at the same time.

Stormtroopers of orthodoxy, Gen-X and Millennial, rigid and unyielding in desperate times of COVID-19, fill our seminaries and empty into our parishes. Thank you, JPII. Go ask them about the historical Santa Claus, Saint Nicholas of Myra. A good number of them will tell you he punched heresiarch Arius dead in the face. 

Man, do we have a lot of Trumper “Proud Boys” wearing collars these days. They are buried deep in the closet with many violent fantasies. Believe me, I know it. I’ve worked really closely with them for 21 years, drank with them, and seen them drunk. Few of them make happy drunks, my friends. One I know, a real homophobe, gets wasted every trip to Key West and wants to start brawling with the drag queens and pretty much everyone else. He’s not a solitary example. 

It’s time we tell these addicts enough with pooling ignorance about Nicholas of Myra. Every year these ignorant people relish spouting on about something that never happened—St. Nick decking the halls of Nicaea with glass-jawed Arius. Stop enabling them. Get informed. 

But Santa Had To Punch Him!

And it doesn’t matter that right-wing Catholic rags like National Catholic Register have demonstrated that the story is untrue. They still cling to it. They must, you see. The reason is because fundamentalists are idolaters for the false-god Certitude. And from incinerated abortion clinics to the World Trade Center, fundamentalists will go to violent lengths to defend their idol. 

So Badass Santa works for them. And he better work for you too, otherwise… well you know! 

Facts Don’t Lie or Matter

Does it matter that we lack almost any reliable historical information about Nicholas? Nope. Does it matter that we draw almost everything we say about him from hagiographies, basically folk tales and legends, the earliest of which originates from the 9th-century, centuries following the saint’s death? “Who cares!” Says the fundamentalist.

And even if we go by these fanciful and fantastic compilations, we find nowhere within them Santa Nicholas punching Arius. Shouldn’t that matter to someone arrogantly teaching the contrary? When your world is a tribal echo-chamber, not really.

Late Christmas Entries

It isn’t until 1370 we find a record of Nicholas slapping (not punching) a certain Arian. Not Arius himself, mind you, but just one of his followers. Sometime after this, the story mutated, Paul Bunyon style, into Nicholas slapping Arius. Then fast-forward into our times, where eager chickenhawk priestlings gobble up the story as biographical facts, re-contextualizing Santa into Mel Gibson’s FATMAN.

By the way, do watch FATMAN, an interesting entry into the treasury of holiday stories. It is a fun movie with more than superficial shoot-em-up mayhem. The end is the best part. However, I fear that many of these stormtroopers of orthodoxy who adore Mel Gibson and his films (for all the wrong reasons) will hop onto this flick and miss some of it’s most important notes in favor of their own violent fancies.

Santa of History, Badass of Fundamentalism

Back to the historical Santa. Weren’t only bishops invited to Nicaea? Arius wasn’t a bishop! Did Nicholas even meet Arius? 

But see, truth doesn’t really matter to fundamentalists. All that matters is that they are RIGHT (in their own minds). To the extent, a re-contextualized Santa Claus helps that agenda, great. Look at the many people in denial right now over the election. It’s been a month since it became evident that Santa Trump lost, but not to these folks. 

Santa Stupidity

This is stupidity, the misuse of intelligence. And this stupidity is deadly. Deck the halls with this, Santa baby—by Summer 2021, because people like this and their god-emperor Donald Trump, we are looking at nationwide deaths that may be more than 600K. Merry Christmas! 

Back on October 24, backed up by science, your Fellow Dying Inmate posted that by November 14, we would probably have 235K and 247K dead in this country. The resulting animosity and venom from Trumper deniers and Newsmax-watchers were more typical than astounding.  So, on November 15, the CDC reported 244,810 deaths from Coronavirus. 

It is December 5, 2020, and we have over 3,000 people dying every day from the pandemic, with models predicting 539K dead by April 1. Hospitals are maxing out. And Americans, many of them Christian, just won’t be told what to do! 

Lesser Bishops Than Nicholas

And the bishops, many of whom gave Donald Trump (who loves executing black people) their veiled endorsements? Yap on about abortion and being pro-life while sitting pretty in their mansions as their employees suffer. Keep those parish schools open, despite solid science! Their favorite Prez and Governors won’t tell them “no,” and neither will a SCOTUS, it seems. So, without the possibility of a class-action lawsuit, what’s to worry about? 

It’s grossly immoral and criminally negligent, you say? C’mon. Moral principles are only for the small fries, not the pezzonovante-types. Just look at the McCarrick Report.

We won’t see the damage of Thanksgiving until around the night before Christmas, and we won’t know the harm of COVID-Christmastide until the day Joe Biden gets sworn in. 

Deadly Errors

It’s all related, folks. No lack of ancient evidence can stop the stupidity of fundamentalism. No endless nightmare of abusive clergy can stop a codependent laity from their clericalist enabling. And even the horrors of preventable mass deaths due to a pandemic can’t stop American stupidity either. Death and stupidity go dancing, right down into the grave.