Bad Santa: The Poor Role Model that is Old Saint Nick - By Adam Paul
Many stories have been told about Santa Claus over the years. From the children’s bedtime classic “The Night Before Christmas” and its wholesome presentation of Jolly Ol’ Saint Nick, to the Christmas all-timer twist on the mythology with Tim Allen’s The Santa Clause, to some of the even more twisted modern tales like Fat Man and Violent Night. Not everyone remembers that Santa Clause is based on a real life figure from the history of the church, Saint Nicholas of Myra . He was an early Greek-descended Bishop, and he was most certainly not the jolly man in red from the Coca-Cola commercials. Nicholas was alive during the one of the early church’s most significant controversies, the Arian heresy. Arius called into question the deity of Christ, making him out to be a lesser being, a god (lower case “g”), the first being created by God the Father, but not co-equal and co-eternal with the Father. A dangerous, Gospel-undermining view that actu...