On the off-chance that I ever have kids, I will definitely be looking forward to having that ‘talk’ about the existence of Santa Claus. 

All right, you wanna know the truth? 

Santa’s dead.

Yup, died years ago, long before you were ever born. 

I mean, come on – Christmas has been around since…..forever, right?   He’d be over a hundred years old if he were still alive.  Nobody lives that long, especially not a guy who lives off of milk and cookies.  

See, he worked himself to death.  Just like the guy in that movie, Amadeus.

You’ve never seen Amadeus?  We’ll watch it on your birthday. 

But see, after he died the world’s top Christian scientists got together and cloned him.  Multiple times. Cuz they, like we all do, wanted Santa to be around forever. 

 So you see that guy in the mall there really is Santa; he’s just not the original Santa. 

Are you following me so far? 

But see, these clone Santas don’t really know that they’re clones - they all think they’re the original.  And if they found out, they wouldn’t be able to handle it.  Something about realizing you’re a clone makes you crazy, I guess.  But what this means is that you can never tell them any of this, okay? 

None of this “you’re not the real Santa” or “my dad says you’re a clone,”, okay?  Cuz if you do, they will go bat-shit crazy and start killing everyone. 

And it’ll be all your fault. 

No, I am not making this up.  Now good night and sweet dreams. 

Yea? 

No.  The reindeer & elves died too.  The Santas use Federal Express now. 

So here’s something about Christmas that I didn’t really give a lot of thought to until just recently. 

I was with a couple of friends last night and someone jokingly asked what the true meaning of Christmas was. 

After the laughter died down, (because it’s so obvious, amIrite?) we somehow (and I’m still not sure how this happened) started seriously discussing this topic. 

“Well, it depends on who you ask,” etc. etc. 

The topic quickly moved to discussing how Christmas means different things to different cultures:  while it’s pretty obvious why most Christian cultures celebrate Christmas, we concluded that there are probably other non-christian cultures that also celebrate Christmas for completely different reasons, with completely different traditions. 

For some reason, I doubt the "Who's" are Christian

The only real example I can think of is Japan. 

I asked Fred (who currently lives in Japan and is therefore my only really accurate resource on the subject) about this and he told me that the holiday is is largely marketed as a couples' holiday (like Valentine's Day); they go out for dinner and exchange gifts on Christmas Day at popular/upscale restaurants that start booking that night several months in advance.  Apparently, a lot of people buy "Christmas cakes" that need to be ordered weeks in advance. Some families stop giving their kids gifts after they reach 10 years old.  And most families don’t buy Christmas trees. 

And while most Japanese know that Christmas is about giving / receiving gifts, they don’t know why or even how the holiday originated. 

Anyway, this got me wondering how Christians feel about this “evolution” of the Holiday.  I mean, it’s one thing to see Corporations turn Christmas into the biggest Shopping frenzy of the year, but what about these other interpretation of Christmas by largely non-Christian cultures? 

• Are they offended by this? 
• Are they glad that a such Christian tradition has become so popular? 
• Does it even matter to them? 

I wasn’t raised a Christian in the slightest, so I’m pretty clueless about all this (I was thoroughly weirded out during Lent when I saw a bunch of people with dark smudges on their foreheads) and my curiosity is always piqued in these matters.