Between the Panels

   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...

A man in a red suit, a large antlered beast, the sound of sleigh bells ringing on a snowy night, and a raised crossbow loaded for battle?!?! That’s right crew; you are not reading a typo there. Earlier this month DC Comics published a comic series ( Silent Knight ) featuring our big man in red, a.k.a.  Santa Clause (though he prefers to be called Chris Kringle ) showing up in a way that would get our D&D nerds amped for an impromptu session. One of the best parts of this series was the different heroes’ reactions to the reality that Chris was not a holly jolly guy, but an epic, battle-worn warrior. Turns out that Chris doesn’t just deliver presents to boys and girls, but fights off the things that go bump in the night for the sake of the world’s safety.   Reading through this series made Santa interesting for me.  Like I would look at pictures of Santa throughout Christmas and would automatically translate those images to Chris from the comics. We have a bit of a ha...