Santa = Satan?

Whoa whoa whoa Eric, are you talking about Jolly Ole St. Nick? Kris Kringle? Santa, Santa Claus?! How dare you equate a cherished and beloved symbol of the Christmas season with the Father of Lies, the Prince of Darkness? Come it's not like we're worshiping Santa Claus. We know he's not real, it's just something fun we do like the tooth fairy or the Easter bunny (Don't you know that Jesus and his disciples painted eggs together at the Last Supper?).  You don't need to go all extreme and make things black and white. All in good fun, all in good fun.

Haha, I agree but here are my reservations:
1. We can kind of safely have these pseudo-symbols or characters on religious holidays like Christmas and Easter because America is a Christian-ish country.  And by that I mean, we're now labeled post-Christian, but there's cultural, symbolic, and moralistic residue left over from when America used to be very Christian.  So for the Christians at least, it might be something Christians kind of play along with but everyone knows God is the only true and living God and that Jesus is the reason for the season.  And for non-Christians, Santa can be something to give some kind of meaning to their holiday break from work (as far as I know, no Asian countries give Christmas day off).
2. It might be more okay in America to just play along with these kinds of things because Western materialistic worldview discredits the supernatural as a given. At a certain age, no one's really going to believe that tooth fairies, Santa Claus and the Easter bunny exists.  However, in a more pantheistic, spiritual/animistic Eastern/Asian worldview everything is and can be a god and is able to be worshiped.  For example, P'Mee shared with me once that if you take a funny shaped rock, say it brings good luck and give it to an animistic Thai, they'll put it up on their shelf of religious objects and believe that it's going to give you good luck.  If you come and say a statue changed your life, they'll take the statue and worship that.  If you give them the Bible and say that it changed your life, they.... no they don't take that one.

So let's look at the nature and powers of Santa:
1. Possibly immortal as he's been handing out presents for hundreds of years.
2. Has the power of flight
3. Possibly omnipresent, especially if he's going to every child's house in one night. Or the power of super-speed.
4. Possibly has the power of teleportation, especially when your apartment doesn't have a chimney. (Maybe he's just good at picking locks)
5. Omniscient - He sees you when you're sleeping, he knows when you're awake, he knows if you've been bad or good... So be good for goodness' sake.
6. Apparently works according to the universal moral law. If you're good, you get a good gift. If you're bad, you get coal. What if you're really bad, like evil? It's been discussed, you get coal. (Five points to anyone who knows where that line is from.)
    a. However, he doesn't seem to keep a real list, or is quite gracious because everyone seems to get gifts on Christmas morning. (Except that one time when I went on vacation to Las Vegas with my family and my mom said Santa wouldn't come follow us on vacation.)

Sounds like a god to me.  I'm not writing this post to point fingers at America and Christians who celebrate Santa with their kids and tell them they're worshiping Satan. I'm not that crazy.  But it's interesting to take a look at Santa from the Thai perspective and understand exactly why the Christian church would dare not bring Santa into any type of Christian tradition.  They have their own cultural residue that they need to get rid of and to bring in an imported tradition that could possibly be received through a spiritual/animistic worldview doesn't sound too safe.  Thai Buddhists look at Christianity through their worldview anyway - either something to be rejected or just another way to nirvana.  I'm sure there's enough confusion trying to explain the idea of a personal creator God and the reason why we need the gospel, so to add Santa is quite unwise.

Is Santa Satan? Is it coincidence that they use the SAME LETTERS?! I'm not going to shove my opinion down anyone's throats but as you make your opinion for yourself, let us consider who we worship and what this Christmas season is for.  Not a jolly old fat man with super powers, but a man who "had no form or majesty that we should look at him and no beauty that  we should desire him," a "man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief."  A man "wounded for our transgressions...crushed for our iniquities," and by whose stripes we are healed. (Isaiah 53)

This season is about Christ Jesus:
  ⁶Who, being in very nature God,
      did not consider equality with God something to be grasped,
 ⁷but made himself nothing,
      taking the very nature of a servant,
      being made in human likeness.
 ⁸And being found in appearance as a man,
      he humbled himself
      and became obedient to death—
         even death on a cross!
 ⁹Therefore God exalted him to the highest place
      and gave him the name that is above every name,
 ¹⁰that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow,
      in heaven and on earth and under the earth,
 ¹¹and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord,
      to the glory of God the Father.
(Philippians 2:6-11)

Glory to God in the highest!