The Rev Dr Paul Chamberlain’s heresy that there is no Santa

Last week, while conducting a religious education class for 10-year-olds at a primary school in Lee-on-Solent in Hampshire, England, the Rev Dr Paul Chamberlain told the children there was no such person as Santa Claus.

To compound the felony, he warmed to his work by saying that their parents bought their presents and actually ate the biscuits left out for Santa.

What followed would have softened the heart of a tax gatherer. Weeping children, their dreams shattered, stumbled home through their tears to tell their parents of this outrage. The local church hierarchy have announced they are ‘‘working on the problem’’ and the vicar has issued an apology. But why has the reverend gentleman not been defrocked? Or, assuming he is not one of those cross-dressing vicars we hear so much about, why has he not been de-bagged?

While it’s generally accepted that many clergymen don’t believe in God and that many others regard the Ten Commandments, hell and heaven as optional extras, the fact the vicar was let loose on a class of youngsters suggests the diocese has some work ahead of it.

Surely, they must have known he was not the man for the job. His doctorate involved research using chemistry to understand what some insects that live in soil eat. He claims to be a big fan of science fiction yet is unable to accept a sleigh drawn by reindeer encircling the globe in 24 hours. He is obviously a troubled man, best placed in a monastery, preferably of the Trappist persuasion.

His lesson was hardly the stuff to fire the imaginations of children and, let’s face it, Christmas and all its trappings is best enjoyed by using your imagination.

Imagine now that you are a small child and it’s Christmas Eve. You’ve sorted things with Santa Claus. A letter posted a month ago and, while it was a bit nerve-racking, you actually met him at the department store and made sure he’d received your order for a Hornby train set. He’d checked that you’d been a good boy and muttered, ‘‘I’ll see what I can do’’. Sounded pretty positive. That he was also at the other department store had been explained to you by your parents pointing out that he does a two-hour stint at each of the shops. Seems reasonable.

Picture that growing gallery of Christmas cards lining the mantelpiece and now being strung out around the wall. Cards you’ve collected each morning as you wait by the letterbox for the postie and his young offsider with his holiday job. That’s a job you’d like when you are older. You’ve checked each envelope seeking the slightly padded one which will be Aunt Vera’s pound notes, one for each of you, your brothers and sisters.

Uncle Pete has sent down a Christmas tree from the farm with some scraps of wool still stuck to the trunk and much fun has been had hauling out the box of decorations and festooning the branches with tinsel, stars and a rather battered old angel on a dangerous tilt above it all.

Under the tree there’s a growing pile of presents, some with your name on them. In spite of surreptitious prodding, their contents remain a mystery, apart from one. There’s no way of wrapping that disguises a tennis racket.

You started the countdown weeks ago when Christmas seemed never to be coming, but at a snail’s pace the days have crept by. Ten sleeps to go and then the home straight. Nine, eight, seven and onwards until, on this very day, it’s only one more sleep.

All that’s left is to help organise the slice of Christmas cake and bottle of Speight’s under the tree for Santa. How he’ll get down the chimney is no problem. Last year he left sooty footprints on the carpet. After all, you’re past the wimpy Janet and John books and now your reading includes Superman comics. If a second-tier hero like Superman can leap tall buildings in a single bound, a superstar like Santa will have no problem with squeezing down a chimney.

Santa’s globe-encircling flight in just 24 hours is a doddle for such a man and if you can stay awake late enough you may just see him coming. It gets dark late just now but surely last year you managed to glimpse a small light moving across the sky from the north and seeming to head straight for your house.

As for reindeer pulling the sleigh, you’ve seen the film about Dumbo the flying elephant, so flying reindeer are no great mystery.

In the morning that presents pile will surely include a Hornby train set. After all, you’ve been as well-behaved as possible, at least for the past few weeks.

Ah, to be a child on Christmas Eve.

Just imagine it!

— Jim Sullivan is a Patearoa writer.