By Carlos Garrido

A comrade recently pointed my attention to a comedy skit by Foil Arms and Hog called “Santa is Captured by the Russians,” where for two minutes Mr. Clauss is interrogated by the Soviet police. Below are some excerpts from the conversation:

Santa: I think there has been some sort of a mistake. You see I have a very busy night tonight.
Soviet Police 1: He was found attempting to hide in a chimney.
Soviet Police 2: Chimney? What were you doing in Russian airspace?
Santa: I've already told you…
(Santa gets slapped): Ho, ho, ho... That was naughty.
Soviet Police: We found a list of names.
Santa: Ah my list.
Soviet Police: These are American spies?
Santa: No, no…
Soviet Police: There was also a second list.
Santa: Oh you don't want to be on that list.
Soviet Police: You plan to kill these people.
Santa: No, no, they just get a bad present… It used to be a bag of coal… but the whole climate change thing...
Soviet Police: We intercepted a communication from one of his assets.
“Dear Santa, I have been a good girl. I would like a Silvanian Family Cosy Cottage Starter Home.”
Soviet Police: This is clearly code.
Santa: No it's not code.
Soviet Police: Then who is Santa?
Santa: That's me.
Soviet Police: You said your name was Father Christmas.
Santa: Yes, I'm known by very many names.
Soviet Police: So you are spy?... How do you know my children's names?... What are you doing in Russia?
Santa: Presents, I deliver presents.
Soviet Police: Presents? For who?
Santa: Well, to all the children in the world.
Soviet Police: All the children in the world? In return for what?
Santa: Well, nothing.
Soviet Police: Nothing? So...You are communist?
Santa: Da (Yes)… Why do you think I wear red comrade?
Soviet Police: Signals to officer outside “Comrade, two vodka, one cookies and milk.”

This captures wonderfully the gap between reality and the values and narratives enunciated by the liberal capitalist world. Father Christmas is said to be this selfless gift-bringer, someone who enjoys seeing the smile on kids’ faces as they receive – assuming they weren’t naughty – their new toys. Santa Claus gives, in the traditional narrative, to all kids, irrespective of class (but especially the poor), race, nationality, and sex. He gives these gifts, most importantly, for free. He does not give in exchange for money. His purpose, telos, is not profit. He gives gifts to meet the playful needs of children. His goal is social good, not capital accumulation. He gives so that kids can play, so that they may fulfill what it means to be a kid. He does not give so that parents’ pockets are hollowed, and his North Pole bank account inflated.

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Santa Claus’s logic is completely antithetical to the capitalist system. A system premised on producing for the sake of capital accumulation and not social and common good is in contradiction with Father Christmas’s telos. Both the real St. Nicholas (270 – 342 AD) and the Santa Claus we consume in popular culture gift-give without any attempt at obtaining recognition. Unlike the charities in the capitalist West, Santa’s giving does not afford him major tax deductions, and neither does it boost his ‘humanitarian philanthropist profile’ through large, broadcasted events. Saint Nicholas’s giving was not some big spectacle, quite the opposite. He climbs in through the chimney when everyone is sleeping to leave gifts and go. He stands on the side of the poor and does his part in attempting to bring about social justice.

While this is the dominant narrative we operate with, the reality of our commodified Christmas, and of Santa Claus as the personified agent of such commodification, is directly opposed to the narrative itself. As Valerie Panne notes, modern capitalist Christmas has turned Santa Claus into a “decorative marketing tool…for hysterical shopping.” Santa’s commodified image – first used by Coca-Cola in the 1930s – has become instrumental in helping the capitalists realize profit. He has become an instrument used to, as Marx notes in volumes two and three of Capital, “cut the turn over time of capital… The shorter the period of turnover, the smaller this idle portion of capital as compared with the whole, and the larger, therefore, the appropriated surplus-value, provided other conditions remain the same.”

Here we see a clear gap in the enunciated values and the reality of capitalist society. At the ideological level, that is, at the level of how we collectively think about the story and figure of Santa Claus, we find heartwarming values of empathy, selfless giving, and community. However, this ideological level is rooted in the reality of a Santa Claus used to promote conspicuous consumption (as Thorstein Veblen notes), the commodification of family time, traditions, and relations, and the accumulation of capital in the hands of the few.

The ideological reflection of the real world provides an upside-down, topsy-turvy image of itself. This is the essence of bourgeois ideology qua false consciousness. It is a social order that necessitates the general acceptance of an inverted understanding of itself. We come to erroneously understand the “capitalist” Santa through the narratives of the “communist” Santa. Reality is turned on its head. But this is not, as Vanessa Wills notes, a problem of “epistemic hygiene”. The root of the ‘error’ is not in our minds, that is, in our reflection of the objective phenomena at hand. As I’ve argued previously, “it is much deeper than this; the inversion or ‘mistake’ is in the world itself… This world reflects itself through an upside-down appearance, and it must necessarily do so to continuously reproduce itself.” As Marx and Engels noted long ago,

If in all ideology men and their relations appear upside-down as in a camera obscura, this phenomenon arises just as much from their historical life-process as the inversion of objects on the retina does from their physical life-process.

To understand the gap between how Santa Claus (or Christmas) is understood and how it actually functions in modern capitalist society it is insufficient to see the problem simply as one of subjective ‘misunderstandings’ held by individuals, classes, or whole peoples. One must investigate the political economy which grounds, that is, which reflects that erroneous image of itself. The gap between the actual “capitalist” Santa and the ideological “communist” Santa is objective, it is required by the existing material relations of social production and reproduction. Capitalist ideology must disguise the cut-throat values of bourgeois individualism with the universalist values of Santa’s socialistic humanism.

But this is nothing new. Santa Claus is just another particular instant of a universal bourgeois phenomenon. The capitalist class has never been able to fully realize, to make actual, the values it enunciates with its appearance in the arena of universal history as a dominant force. Its universal appeals to liberty, equality, fraternity, etc. have always been limited within the confines of their class. As Marx had already noted in 1843, “the practical application of the right of liberty is the right of private property;” “the necessary condition for whose existence,” he and Engels write in 1848, “is the non-existence of any property for the immense majority of society.” The phrasing of ‘all men’ used to formulate rights under capitalism is always with the understanding, as Marx notes, of “man as a bourgeois,” it is “the rights of the egotistic man, separated from his fellow men and from the community.” Its values, and their reflection in their judicature, always present their narrow class interests embellished by abstract language used to appeal to the masses and obtain their consenting approval for a form of social life which they’re in an objectively antagonistic relation with.

The ideologues of the bourgeoisie always provide the masses with a “bad check,” as Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. would say. But eventually, as King notes, the masses will come in to cash that check somehow. They’ll notice that within the confines of the existing order, the prosperity that checked promised is unrealizable. Capitalism has never, and will never, fulfill the universal values it pronounces as it breaks out of the bonds of feudal absolutism. Only socialism can.

The values embedded in the narrative surrounding Santa Claus, Father Christmas, Saint Nicholas, or whatever else you want to call him, will never be actual within capitalist society. Only socialism can universalize the form of selfless relationality we have come to associate with Santa.

Carlos L. Garrido is a Cuban American philosophy instructor at Southern Illinois University, Carbondale. He is the director of the Midwestern Marx Institute and the author of The Purity Fetish and the Crisis of Western Marxism (2023), Marxism and the Dialectical Materialist Worldview (2022), and the forthcoming Hegel, Marxism, and Dialectics (2024).

By Stephen Mucher

Many Americans remain discouraged or angry about the presidential election. Those gathering around the tree this holiday season with Evangelical family may feel particularly bewildered. No demographic played a more central role in the election outcome. Over 80 percent of self-described Evangelicals voted for Donald Trump.

I grew up in the Evangelical movement of the 1970s. I was raised in the Southern churches that gave birth to the Moral Majority. I had a front row seat as Christian conservatives, initially agitating from outside mainstream politics, eventually reshaped and emboldened the Republican Party.

I have some advice. And even some good news.

Those of us interacting with Evangelicals at Christmas no longer have to play defense. The script has flipped. The candidate who hung the "loser" label on seemingly every group not white or Christian, turned out to be correct. With a firmer grip on both houses of Congress than any party since 1928, and nearly unprecedented influence in state legislatures and governor's mansions, Trump's Republican Party has secured a national safe space for the voters who make up this long emergent winning coalition.

Fortunately those of us deeply troubled by this right wing ascendency are no longer obligated, post-election, to defend any particular alternative to Trump. We can now focus exclusively on Trumpism and dismantling the narratives that made this political trend possible. These efforts begin by treating Trump voters, not as outsiders, but as winners who owe us an explanation for what happens next. And we can go a step further with Evangelicals: requiring explanations that are grounded in actual Christian religious belief and in the sacred texts they say guide their decisions.

This expectation will put many pro-democracy activists in an unusual position. Atheists, agnostics, Jews, liberal Catholics, mainstream Protestants, and many thoughtful people with other beliefs aren't exactly well practiced at proselytizing. Those who typically view religious faith as a personal and private endeavor will find it difficult to do what I suggest here. Yet many of us know family and friends who, within the chosen safety of their Evangelical enclaves, are never held accountable or asked to explain the many ugly national sins that made their candidate's rise possible - the mendacity, bigotry, xenophobia, misogyny, and language of violence that so clearly energized the Trump phenomenon. These unconfessed sins, as well as ongoing support from Evangelicals, are precisely what will keep Trump in power or drive him from it. Given the circumstances, it is appropriate to expect, if not demand, religious answers to questions we ourselves may not find particularly religious.

Our conscience, and the weight of this historical moment, should serve as a reminder that this strategy is more than an exercise in irony. We can now refuse the inevitable attempts by Trump Evangelicals to revert to arguments no longer relevant under new dynamics of governance. We can also ask Trump Evangelicals to explain the connection they make between their chosen president and their own heartfelt religious convictions. Both of these tactics and the simple strategy outlined below can ease our own holiday conversation frustrations and, more importantly, serve as small necessary acts of political resistance. As Trump himself proved, one does not need any theological expertise to talk religion with Evangelicals. But a few basic rules for discussion can help:

1. Don't discuss Hillary. There is nothing that Trump Evangelicals would rather do than talk about Hillary Clinton, a nemesis they have relied on for thirty years. She is gone. Don't be baited. Hillary-talk is often an evasion of persons who fear your questions about what Christianity requires of them in a post-Clinton era.

2. Don't discuss Obama. This may be more difficult. You may feel nostalgia and a moral impulse to defend an unfairly maligned minority president. Don't go there. It serves no productive purpose.

3. Don't discuss Trump. Accept the fact Trump supporters were inspired, not just by his promises, but by how he made them feel. His persona, full of flip-flopping and exaggeration ensures you won't get far pinning down "the real Donald Trump" at post-truth holiday gatherings.

4. Don't discuss Trump voters. Some readers will object that I put too many Evangelicals in the same basket of deplorables. If so, they have a valid point. Voters cast ballots for a wide variety of reasons, including frustrations about economic fairness and national belonging that deserve compassion. You should concede this point too and move on.

5. Discuss Jesus. What you believe about Jesus is not the point. You aren't on trial. But a group of people charged by their holy book to share the good news of Christ is now the most potent voting block for the most dominant, powerful political majority of your lifetime. You can indignantly expect answers. You can ask what this "good news" actually entails. You ask why the kinds of people Jesus ministered to, the poor and dispossessed, aren't viewing this news as particularly good right now.

Talking about Jesus reveals a faith that originated, not in support of Empire, but in its resistance. The Biblical Jesus gave up power willingly, lived in poverty, and suffered unfairly. Christmas exposes the hypocrisy of voters who cling to incompatible claims, embracing the humble story of Christ's birth while donning the mantle of empire.

Empire offers context for a New Testament story about a poor, pregnant, unwed woman, lacking documentation, health care, or affordable housing, who crossed borders on her way to a post-war occupied Palestinian village called Bethlehem. Empire explains why foreigners and seasonal laborers were among the first to share the joy in her son's humble and homeless birth. Empire explains a judicial system 33 years later that arrested, convicted, incarcerated, and brutalized an innocent man of color. Empire explains Christ, not as a ruler, but as one who was ruled. This context of empire, in short, confronts the Trump Evangelical with images of Jesus as a targeted minority, a refugee, a prisoner, and a torture victim.

Unfortunately, exposing these contradictions of faith and empire won't guarantee the Trump Evangelical's conversion. Post-election polls reveal a demographic with inflated optimism feeling emboldened by this electoral triumph. From this position of power, Trump stalwarts are still likely to interrupt or ignore your efforts to avoid their favorite topics at Christmas dinner. But this proposed strategy can provoke a necessary conversation - one that Evangelicals know, if only subconsciously right now, that they are obligated to engage. Regardless of immediate outcome, this approach gives you necessary strength for your own path of resistance. It picks away at a narrative of Evangelicals as patriotic outsiders bravely seeking to redeem American politics. It gradually removes Trump Evangelicals from the margins and positions them appropriately at the center of U.S. political power. Most importantly, it reminds us that Trump Evangelicals are no longer simply justifying a "prayerful choice" they made in November, they are defending a regime that requires their loyalty each and every day to maintain power.

Speaking truth to Evangelical power matters now more than ever. Given how this power is already being used and exploited, silence is not an option. But we can still discover the effectiveness of remaining quiet as Trump Evangelicals stammer through the most basic questions about their religious commitments in this new age of empire. Indeed we should consider the possibility that our own resistance to power can be most active when listening passively, with or without compassion, as this power is explained, however awkwardly, back to us.

This appeared at Stephen's personal blog.