God, Santa and Peanuts
Santa was possibly my gateway drug to atheism.
Christmas is over. When I was young, below 10, I remember my dad saying, “Christmas comes but once a year” then for effect he would pause, then “thank God.” He and my mom had five boys, so I guess by the point I was old enough to remember this he was probably worn out by the whole thing. Every year I mention that my parents would wait for us all to go to bed on Christmas eve before decorating the house, putting up the tree, and laying out the presents. My partner says she cannot believe that they would do that, but they were playing their role as good parents instilling beliefs in their son(s) that Santa was real, and he did all the work. Of course, even at that early age I was having my doubts about several big things, including Santa and religion.
Santa was possibly my gateway drug to atheism. Even though it was a friendship with benefits – believe that he could hit all those houses, make increasingly complicated toys over the years (by my childhood Pong and GI Joe were quite popular), and not have a heart attack from eating that many cookies and being that overweight – I still had a lot of trouble believing he was real. Roman Catholicism was another complicated belief system that, even at a young age, I had a lot of trouble accepting. This was even after the release of Jesus Christ Superstar. I memorized that soundtrack and saw the movie. I fantasized about being Jesus’ best friend, maybe even an apostle, and heading out with him to score chicks and drink wine (forgive me father, I was in full on puberty and didn’t get the irony). As I moved along, I began to distance myself from the church. I attended less and found the beliefs in the Bible more preposterous.
I was led back by my first great romance. My girlfriend, later wife, was from a very Catholic family and our wedding was in the Polish Community Center in Albany – complete with a very large portrait of Pope John Paul II. We were married by the priest from the Newman Center at our college, Father Bill, whose sermons always connected with bleary college students on a Sunday morning. I remember people applauding when he would finish a particularly good one, usually using Peanuts as a basis for the resolution. But even love and Charlie Brown did not hold me to a faith that I saw as a conglomeration of controlling and creating rules that were mostly common sense (don’t kill) and being a good human being. Personally, that seems like something you should do on your own.
I read Christopher Hitchen’s God is Not Great and loved it, but he spent a lot of time in it pointing out that the stories in the Bible were either a) faulty, b) unethical, or c) causing great negative effects on civilization. I always felt he hit too hard and perhaps drew on the many negative experiences of his childhood to lash out at religion. I accept the fact that religion is a thing that is going to happen, as it has throughout human civilization. And, there are always going to be those people who take advantage of religion to assume power, abuse others, or make money. Honestly, it only interests me in that so many others tend to join that club – billions. Understanding why we, as a society, feel that need to hand over control to entities which often take advantage (formal religion) or deny us living in the moment for a delayed payoff after death, has always fascinated me. Maybe it is just that I have burnt many candles at both ends in life.
Just a word if there is a God up there. I am pretty sure that entity will not look down on me and say “you didn’t follow my XYZ religion, therefore you are cast out for eternity from my very cool eternity gated community.” My thought is that this God, being all seeing, all powerful will get that I tried to live my life as best I can and, when the chips were down, I did what was right. Human, that me.
As I write this I am relaxing on the couch. It is New Year’s Day and we have split the day up into home repair – circular saw used and I will have fingers – that will deny a neighborhood cat the use of our under porch space as a bathroom facility (sorry Gray Kitty), writing and sending in poems, eating way too many Christmas cookies, and generally enjoying the quiet of the neighborhood. Me and the love spent last night watching Wicked, quite good, drinking a bottle of the French wine we brought back from Paris (our cap reading method has yielded several 8–12-euro wines that are really good), and asking questions (We’re Not Really Strangers being a favorite source). I’m not going to get all philosophical about the New Year. I tend to use it as a measure for how the year before went (kind of a shit show) and what I want to achieve in the coming year (not to have a shit show).
Last year at this time I wanted to make more room for my poetry and, to give it some weight, I declared I want to get published. It was successful in that it forced me to make writing more of a practice and, to date, I’ve gotten 3 poems published. This year I want to develop my chapbook and see where that goes. I don’t think Leonard Cohen has anything to worry about (in whatever great beyond he exists), but this is a good goal. As I get older I find them falling further away from material goals and being more about self-fulfillment. I wish 61-year old me had had more talks with 25-year old me, but, alas, this is how the sausage is made.
Happy New Year, there is much merry to be making in 2025.