He sees you when you're sleeping

Ever heard of a tulpa?

I wrote about this (alleged) phenomenon a while back, so long-time readers of Skeptophilia might recall that it is when a bunch of people believe in a fictional character with sufficient fervor that said character becomes real.

Well, in some sense.  Even most true believers don't think they end up as flesh-and-blood, more that they can appear in spirit form (whatever that means when applied to a character that is fictional in the first place).  It all sounds like a lot of wishful thinking to me, although as a fiction writer, I can say with some certainty that I would very much rather the characters in my books not come to life.  There are a few I'd like to have a beer with, sure.  But most of them?  Nope.

Lydia Moreton from In the Midst of Lions, for example, can stay safely in the realm of the unreal, thank you very much.

Be that as it may, apparently there are now people who think that there's a tulpa who is around mostly at this time of year.  So I'm sure you can predict that who I'm talking about is...

... Santa Claus.

No, I'm not making this up.  In an article over at Mysterious Universe, Brent Swancer tells us about a number of alleged sightings of Jolly Old Saint Nick.  And not to beat the point unto death, but these people do not believe that they're seeing someone dressed up as Santa Claus; they think they've actually had a close encounter with the real guy.

The word real, of course, being used advisedly.  Here's one such account, just so you can get the flavor of it.  A woman named Ana says she saw Santa when she was five years old, and the encounter was not exactly heartwarming:

He must have felt my presence because he turned around and looked at me.  He didn’t look jolly or kind and happy like you would expect Santa Claus to look.  He looked kind of eerie like he was staring into my soul.  Automatically, I ran into my parents’ room and hid under the covers.  I don’t know why I was so scared at the time, but I wrote it off as a dream for a while before I forgot about it completely.  Years later, I remembered it.  I thought it could have been a burglar, but when I asked my parents, nothing was ever missing from that apartment.  The only time we were ever robbed was when we moved later on.  The only explanation I have now is that it was some kind of apparition.

Of course, that's not the only explanation, but you knew I'd say that.

His eyes, how they twinkled!  His dimples, how merry!  [Image licensed under the Creative Commons Jackie, Evil clown Santa Claus, CC BY 2.0]

Loyd Auerbach, a "professor of parapsychology" over at Atlantic University, used similar verbiage to describe the accounts:

I’ve never even heard of people seeing Santa.  The Grim Reaper, yes, but not Santa.  The only possibility of this being real is if it’s an alien or a ghost pretending to be Santa.  We can’t investigate that.  There’s nothing we can do with that.

Um.  We could investigate it if it was the Grim Reaper, but not if it's Santa?  Or if it's not actually Santa, our only options are that it's an alien or a ghost impersonating Santa?

I think these people need to review the concept of "only possibility."

So anyhow, I think the main issue here is that if it were true, it doesn't exactly paint a reassuring picture of Santa Claus.  In fact, it gives sinister overtones to lines like "He sees you when you're sleeping, he knows when you're awake," not to mention, "I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus."  It also gives me pause when I hear the stanza from "Up on the Housetop" that goes:

Next comes the stocking of Little Will
Oh, just see what a glorious fill
Here is a hammer and lots of tacks
Also a ball and a whip that cracks.

Is it just me, or does it sound like Little Will made his Christmas list to fill out the equipment in his My Very Own Li'l Tots BDSM Dungeon?

Myself, I find the whole thing vaguely terrifying.  It's a good thing I think it's all a myth.  On the other hand, even if I'm wrong and Sinister Santa is real, he's still better than Krampus or the Giant Icelandic Christmas Cat, the Jólakötturinn, who comes out on Christmas Eve and eats bad children.

Which, for the record, I also didn't make up.

So I'd like to wish a lovely Christmas season to all who celebrate, and best of luck avoiding evil Santas or humongous child-eating cats.  Also the Grim Reaper, for what it's worth.

****************************************

He sees you when you're sleeping

Dear Readers,

I'll be taking next week off to spend some time with family, so there'll be a brief hiatus here at Skeptophilia HQ.  Posts will resume Monday, December 31, but I'll still be happy to receive any suggestions for topics while I'm on break!

So happy holidays to all who celebrate.  See you on New Year's Eve.

cheers,

Gordon

*****************************************

Ever heard of a tulpa?

I wrote about this (alleged) phenomenon a while back, so long-time readers of Skeptophilia might recall that it is when a bunch of people believe in a fictional character with sufficient fervor that said character becomes real.

Well, in some sense.  Even most true believers don't think they end up as flesh-and-blood, more that they can appear in spirit form (whatever that means when applied to a character that is fictional in the first place).  It all sounds like a lot of wishful thinking to me, although as a fiction writer, I can say with some certainty that I would very much rather the characters in my books not come to life.  There are a few I'd like to have a beer with, sure.  But most of them?

They can stay safely in the realm of the unreal, thank you very much.

Be that as it may, apparently there are now people who think that there's a tulpa who is around mostly at this time of year.  So I'm sure you can predict that who I'm talking about is...

... Santa Claus.

No, I'm not making this up.  In an article over at Mysterious Universe, Brent Swancer tells us about a number of alleged sightings of Jolly Old Saint Nick.  And not to beat the point unto death, these people do not believe that they're seeing someone dressed up as Santa Claus; they think they've actually had a close encounter with the real guy.

The word real, of course, being used advisedly.  I don't want to steal Swancer's thunder, because his article is well worth reading in its entirety, but here's one such account, just so you can get the flavor of it.  A woman named Ana says she saw Santa when she was five years old, and the encounter was not exactly heartwarming:

He must have felt my presence because he turned around and looked at me.  He didn’t look jolly or kind and happy like you would expect Santa Claus to look.  He looked kind of eerie like he was staring into my soul.  Automatically, I ran into my parents’ room and hid under the covers.  I don’t know why I was so scared at the time, but I wrote it off as a dream for a while before I forgot about it completely.  Years later, I remembered it.  I thought it could have been a burglar, but when I asked my parents, nothing was ever missing from that apartment.  The only time we were ever robbed was when we moved later on.  The only explanation I have now is that it was some kind of apparition.

Of course, that's not the only explanation, but you knew I'd say that.

His eyes, how they twinkled!  His dimples, how merry!  [Image licensed under the Creative Commons Jackie, Evil clown Santa Claus, CC BY 2.0]

Loyd Auerbach, a "professor of parapsychology" over at Atlantic University, used the same verbiage to describe the accounts:

I’ve never even heard of people seeing Santa.  The Grim Reaper, yes, but not Santa.  The only possibility of this being real is if it’s an alien or a ghost pretending to be Santa.  We can’t investigate that.  There’s nothing we can do with that.

Um.  We could investigate it if it was the Grim Reaper, but not if it's Santa?  Or if it's not actually Santa, our only options are that it's an alien or a ghost impersonating Santa?

 I think these people need to review the concept of "only possibility."

So anyhow, I think the main issue here is that if it were true, it doesn't exactly paint a reassuring picture of Santa Claus.  In fact, it gives kind of sinister overtones to lines like "He sees you when you're sleeping, he knows when you're awake," not to mention, "I saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus."  It also gives me pause when I hear the stanza from "Up on the Housetop" that goes:

Next comes the stocking of Little Will
Oh, just see what a glorious fill
Here is a hammer and lots of tacks
Also a ball and a whip that cracks.

Is it just me, or does it sound like Little Will made his Christmas list to fill out the equipment in his My Very Own Li'l Tots S & M Dungeon?

Myself, I find the whole thing vaguely terrifying.  It's a good thing I think it's all a myth.  On the other hand, even if Sinister Santa is a real thing, he's still better than Krampus or the Giant Icelandic Christmas Cat, the Jólakötturinn, who comes out on Christmas Eve and eats bad children.

Which, for the record, I didn't make up.

So a lovely Christmas to all who celebrate, and best of luck avoiding evil Santas or humongous child-eating cats.  Also the Grim Reaper, for what it's worth.

********************************

This week's Skeptophilia book recommendation is Michio Kaku's The Physics of the Impossible.  Kaku takes a look at the science and technology that is usually considered to be in the realm of science fiction -- things like invisibility cloaks, replicators, matter transporters, faster-than-light travel, medical devices like Star Trek's "tricorders" -- and considers whether they're possible given what we know of scientific law, and if so, what it would take to develop them.  In his signature lucid, humorous style, Kaku differentiates between what's merely a matter of figuring out the technology (such as invisibility) and what's probably impossible in a a real and final sense (such as, sadly, faster-than-light travel).  It's a wonderful excursion into the power of the human imagination -- and the power to make at least some of it happen.

[If you purchase the book from Amazon using the image/link below, part of the proceeds goes to supporting Skeptophilia!]

Subordinate Clauses

Well, it's only a couple of weeks out from Christmas, so I expect a lot of you are excitedly trimming trees and buying presents for friends and family and listening to Christmas music.  Despite being an atheist, I love this holiday.  I think a nicely-decorated Christmas tree is lovely; we'd have a tree this year if I could get out of my own way long enough to go get one (which, with luck, will happen this weekend).  Plus, I really enjoy giving presents to friends, so having an excuse to get stuff for people I care about is awesome.

I even like most Christmas music, especially the older carols.  For example, I grew up singing the lovely French carol "Il Est Né, Le Divine Enfant" and still feel nostalgic every time I hear it, and I think that "O Holy Night" and "Angels We Have Heard On High" are absolutely gorgeous.

Some of the newer ones, on the other hand, bring "annoying" to new heights.  For instance, I doubt there's been a more banal set of lyrics ever written than "Little tin horns and little toy drums, rooty-toot-toot and rummy-tum-tum."  And my considered opinion is that whoever wrote "Let It Snow" should be pitched, bare-ass naked, headfirst into a snow drift.

Still and all, I like this holiday and a lot of its traditions.  Which is why I was alarmed to find out that Santa, the Jolly Old Elf, is actually...

... Satan.

Or at least, so says James L. Melton, of the Bible Baptist Church of Sharon, Tennessee.  Melton is virulently against Santa, and not just because of the usual "put Christ back into Christmas" stuff you hear, exhorting Christians to focus more on the religious traditions than the secular ones.  No, Melton thinks it's worse than that.  He says that Santa is literally Satan, and that you shouldn't put out cookies and milk on Christmas Eve, you should put out devil's-food cake.

[image courtesy of the Wikimedia Commons]

What are his arguments, you may ask?  I was thinking of just giving a summarized list, but some of his reasoning (if I can dignify it by that name) needs to be seen in the original.  So here are a few examples.

SANTA LIVES IN THE NORTH 

Tradition holds that Santa Claus lives at the North Pole, a place ABOVE the rest of us.  

JESUS CHRIST LIVES IN THE NORTH 

"Beautiful for situation, the joy of the whole earth, is mount Zion, on the sides of the north, the city of the great King." (Psa. 48:2)

I don't think Psalm 48 was referring to the North Pole, but what do I know?  I'm no biblical scholar, of course.  Maybe the bears that god sent to the Prophet Elisha to eat the children who had teased him for being bald were polar bears, I dunno.

SANTA WEARS RED CLOTHING  

Santa wears a red furry suit.  

JESUS CHRIST WEARS RED CLOTHING 

"And he was clothed with a vesture dipped in blood: and his name is called The Word of God." (Rev. 19:13)

Well, there were lots of guys on Star Trek who wore red, and as I recall, they weren't all-powerful.  In fact, nearly every episode, several Red Shirts ended up dying in nasty ways.

SANTA IS OMNISCIENT  

Children are taught that Santa "knows when you've been good, and he knows when you've been bad".  

JESUS CHRIST IS OMNISCIENT 

"The eyes of the LORD are in every place, beholding the evil and the good." (Pro. 15:3) "And Jesus knowing their thoughts said, Wherefore think ye evil in your hearts?" (Mat. 9:4) 

Is it just me, or is the idea of an omniscient being spying on you at all times a little... creepy?  I don't care whether it's Santa or Jesus, I'd rather not have someone watching me in the bathroom.

SANTA FLIES AROUND GIVING GIFTS 

Santa has the ability to defy the laws of gravity and fly around giving gifts to people.  

JESUS CHRIST ASCENDED AND GAVE GIFTS UNTO MEN 

"But unto every one of us is given grace according to the measure of the gift of Christ. Wherefore he saith, When he ascended up on high, he led captivity captive, and gave gifts unto men." (Eph. 4:7-8) 

So, what are you saying, Reverend Melton?  That if I'm good this year, Jesus will bring me a Little Tin Horn and a Little Toy Drum?

There are plenty of others, including Santa's elves being evil spirits, and Santa and Jesus both having white hair.

Then he ends by saying that because Santa is sometimes called "Saint Nick," and an old slang for the devil is "Old Nick," that proves it.  And that was when this linguistics geek sat up and said, "Hey now.  You've left the realm of goofy pseudo-theology and started to mess with false etymology. Them's fightin' words."  Because I happen to know that "Old Nick" is the devil because the German word for demon is nickel (yes, it's a cognate to the name of the metal, which was called kupfernickel, or "copper demon," because its ore looked like copper ore but it didn't produce any copper).  "Saint Nick," on the other hand, comes from the name Nicholas, which means "victory of the people" (from the Greek nike, victory + laos, people).

Of course, Reverend Melton would still think the similarity was significant.  He even says that it's no coincidence that "Santa" and "Satan" are spelled from the same letters, something that was pointed out twenty years ago by the "Church Lady" on Saturday Night Live.

So we're not talking about someone who's rational, here. If you look at other things Melton's written about, you find out on his home page that he's also against Catholics, Mormons, Jehovah's Witnesses, and rednecks, that he's all for capital punishment, and he thinks kids need to be spanked regularly.

He also said that he doesn't believe in evolution, which is no great shocker.  He says that you can't use biochemistry to support evolution, because biochemistry is "where scientists mix genes and chromosomes in their effort to prove relation between man and animal."

So it's not like Melton has that firm a grasp on reality.

And I doubt whether his message is going to have much impact.  Too many people like Christmas and get into the traditions, whether they approach it from a religious or a secular stance.  I'm thinking that very few of us are going to give up giving holiday gifts because "Santa is a COUNTERFEIT GOD" (the stuck caps lock courtesy of Reverend Melton).

As for me, I hope to get my tree up this weekend.  I've also gotta get cracking with getting gifts for people.  I might even play some Christmas music today.  Time to get ready, 'cuz Satan Claus is comin' to town.

Um.  Santa Claus.  My bad.

Rooty-toot-toot.

Jesus, Santa, and Megyn Kelly

I like a fair fight.  It's actually fun for me to have a good, riproaring intellectual discussion, in which both my opponent and I know a lot about what we're saying and are willing to bat the ideas around for a while.  Even if we start out disagreeing, and end up no closer together at the end, there is something profoundly satisfying about a purely cerebral dispute.  (And it's a bit of a lost art, frankly.)

On the other hand, sometimes quarrels can be so unequally weighted that it seems unfair.  My dad used to call such arguments "shooting fish in a barrel."  While I don't shy away from those when I see them -- after all, the entire gist of this blog has to do with discussing illogical, irrational, and counterfactual ideas -- I don't get much satisfaction out of saying, basically, "Wow.  This is the dumbest thing I've ever seen."

This comes up because of a link a friend sent me to a news story on the site Crooks & Liars, entitled, "Fox News Host Megyn Kelly Assures Children: Jesus and Santa Were Both White Men."  And my response to him was:  "Oh, they are just making it way too easy for me."

Kelly came up with this bizarre bêtise in response to a column in Slate by Aisha Harris that criticized the depiction of Santa as white, because such practices marginalize non-white children.  She proposed that it might be time to represent the "spirit of Christmas" as an animal, instead:  "For one thing," Harris wrote, "making Santa Claus an animal rather than an old white male could spare millions of nonwhite kids the insecurity and shame that I remember from childhood."

Well.  Far be it from Fox to take such an affront lying down.  Kelly was outraged.  Santa is white, she says.  "For all you kids watching at home, Santa just is white," Kelly said.  "But this person is just arguing that maybe we should also have a black Santa. But Santa is what he is.  Just because it makes you feel uncomfortable doesn't mean it has to change, you know?  I mean, Jesus was a white man too.  He was a historical figure, that's a verifiable fact, as is Santa -- I just want the kids watching to know that."

Let's just clear up a couple of things, okay, Megyn?

The historical basis for the Santa Claus legend is St. Nicholas of Myra, who was a fourth-century bishop in Asia Minor who was revered for giving gifts to the poor.   He was of Greek descent but lived most of his life in what is now Turkey.   It's pretty unlikely that he looked even remotely like the chubby, rosy-cheeked greeting-card Santa.  Chances are, he looked a lot more like this guy...

Patriarch Gregory IV of Antioch (1906)

... than he did this guy:

(Photograph courtesy of photographer Douglas Rahden and the Wikimedia Commons)

And then, of course, there's Jesus, who is often depicted this way:

(image courtesy of the Wikimedia Commons)

Despite the fact that he wasn't, technically, Swedish.

The thought did cross my mind to wonder, however, if Megyn Kelly had come to her conclusions about the ethnicity of Jesus and Santa after doing some research in primary sources:

So.  Anyhow.  Like I said, all of this has me wondering how the people at Fox News still have any audience left.  And I'm not even talking about their political leanings -- as I've said before, I'm neither well-informed enough nor, frankly, interested enough to comment on politics most of the time.  But given their track record for accuracy on the facts, and their commentators' regrettable tendency to utter statements that are (not to put too fine a point on it) moronic, it's no wonder that people have started referring to the network as Faux News.

So that's our fish-shooting exercise for the morning.  But if I were you, I wouldn't hold my breath waiting for Kelly, or anyone else at Fox, to retract the statement.  "Death before retraction!" seems to be the motto over there.  Worse, actually; they often follow up the most boneheaded of their utterances with defenses that dig the hole even deeper.  So in the next couple of days, look for further idiocies from Kelly, including a statement that Moses was white, too, and she knows because she's seen pictures of him and he looks just like Charlton Heston.

Santa Claus is comin' to town

Well, a very happy Christmas Eve to all of you who celebrate it.  I'm sure that many of my readers are eagerly awaiting tomorrow morning, for the joy of seeing what Santa brought for yourself and your loved ones.

I mention St. Nick deliberately, because, you know, I can never be certain if someone who's reading this blog believes in Santa Claus or not, and far be it from me to burst anyone's bubble.  And I'm not just talking about little kids, here.

A recent piece in the Boston Globe (read it here) describes "paranormal expert" Stephen Wagner's fascination with "Santa sightings."  Yes, folks, I'm talking about presumably sane, intelligent adults who have seen the Big Guy for real on Christmas Eve.  For many of these people, it was a life-changing experience.  I know it would be for me; my life would change from "living at home" to "living in a psychiatric ward."

But that's not how most of the people who got to see the Jolly Old Elf in person feel.  Sarah, a 41 year old Californian who saw Santa Claus back in 1975, said the experience was transcendent.  "Seeing Santa changed my outlook forever," she told Wagner, "to the point that I am comfortable with tattooing ol’ Big Red onto my body.  It means that much to me."

Others report confirmation of many items from Santa's familiar accoutrement.  "We [were] driving by a lonely McDonald’s and we [saw] something dashing through the clouds," said one of Wagner's respondents.  "We could all make out Santa’s sleigh and nine reindeer including Rudolph’s nose."  "He was in full Santa attire," Sandra, a 51-year-old Missourian, told Wagner, recounting a sighting from the 1960s.  "He was bent over, then he stood up and took a puff from a pipe." 

It may be uncharitable of me, but in this last case I suspect that Santa might not have been been the one smoking the pipe, if you get my drift.

Wagner, for his part, seems simply to recount the experiences without trying to interpret them or weigh in on their veracity.  Not so Loyd Auerbach, who teaches a parapsychology course at Atlantic University.  "I've never even heard of people seeing Santa," Auerbach scoffs.  "The Grim Reaper, yes, but not Santa."

Because, after all, the Grim Reaper is orders of magnitude more real than Santa Claus, for heaven's sake.  Everyone knows that.

Auerbach goes on to state that these Santa sightings might have a common origin, though.  "The only reason this could be real," he states, "is if it's an alien or a ghost pretending to be Santa."

This is why I could never be an investigative reporter.  I would, on occasion, guffaw directly into people's faces while interviewing them.  I suspect that this would put people off, somehow.

 So given that I'm not especially taken with Auerbach's explanation of Ghost Santa or Alien Santa, I think I'm going with "suggestible people with overactive imaginations."  This is the position of Rebecca Knibb, a reader in psychology at the UK's University of Derby.  Knibb attributes St. Nick sightings to people who are "fantasy-prone," and whose daydreams were already colored by the imagery and mythology of the Christmas season.  At another time or place, Knibb suggests, these same people would be seeing ghosts.

If you are one of the people who have seen Santa Claus -- or any other weird, unexplainable occurrence, for that matter -- you should report it on Stephen Wagner's site, Paranormal Phenomena, wherein you will find a link to the original Santa Sightings report, as well as sightings of Christmas Angels, Christmas Ghosts, and a paranormal explanation for the Star of Bethlehem.  As for me, I'm just going to go wrap a few last presents, because I think the likelihood of Santa showing up in the flesh for someone like me is slim to none.  He knows if you've been bad or good, after all, and I suspect that frank disbelief would fall clearly into the "bad" column.