OK, Sam, here you go! Have a look at the new banner! Below are also some more thoughts on Santa. Does anyone have further concerns? 

OK, let's go over everything that we can hold against Santa! Isn't Santa loved by everyone? Most people do like Santa, he's a jolly old chap and gives presents.

I know, all the libertarians and atheists who support Libertaria may at first glance have concerns about adopting Santa, who is the ultimate christian, a true believer in the Christmas spirit of peace, family, friendship and altruism. The presents are often unwanted cheap toys that break down after one-time usage. So, basically, Santa is kitsch.
 
More sinister, Santa introduces many children into this Christmas spirit, to make children walk in line with the Commandments of Good Behavior, promising rewards for good and obedient behavior all year long. The track record for each child is recorded in minute detail in Santa's big, red book, which also keeps their personal wish-lists. Yes, Santa is omni-scient and knows all our secrets, combining the powers of a God, a catholic priest and Big Brother. In that sense, Santa is a solid preparation for the catholic institute of confession.

Isn't the idea of Santa tresspassing into homes and terrifying children into obedience, basically an instrument to enforce a law-and-order society? As you mentioned, isn't Santa a pedophile, taking pleasure out of positioning a boy onto his lap, while intimidating him and questioning him about his misbehavior, and offering him sweets and lollies for chanting those carols and for being a good boy? Then, there's the secrecy, which seems in conflict with the openess of libertarianism. Santa forces millions of parents to go on a secret annual shopping mission. So, not only is Santa kitsch, he's also fake!

So yes, Santa was originally a catholic saint, and today he's seducing children with old-fashioned magic. Protestants may have destroyed all statues and sculptures of saints during the Reformation, but they must have forgot about this walking symbol of Christmas, who was hiding at the North Pole.

Yes, Santa has become the international symbol of the End-of-Year holidays and the parties that come with that. Many pets are abandoned during the holiday period. Many copy-machines break down in this period, because staff decide to sit on them during end-of-year parties at the office. Over-consumption of food and alcohol abuse peak around this time of year, while many go into debt to pay the bills for the shopping sprees.

Many families like coming together for Christmas, but there are also many people who haven't got any family, or at least not close by to pay them a visit. Do such festivities make the lonely even more lonely and the miserables even more miserable? Isn't Christmas essentially a celebration of good-old catholic family values?

This is indeed where catholicism and socialism go hand in hand. Santa is a friend of the poor, who get a few days off, all at the same time, allowing them to organize family get-togethers. Without the authority of Santa to enforce a formal public holiday period, employers would take away the best time of the year from the poor. 
Santa is a socialist, combining christianity and socialism, thus becoming a unified symbol of trade unions that seek to cement their power by enforcing public holdays. Meanwhile, for causal workers, Christmas is a period of uncertainty. They may not get any work after this period of coerced holidays, at these very times that they typically have to spend more money than usual. While Jesus gave away free bread and fish, and applied free medical treatment on the spot to those in need, Santa merely gives presents, as a preview of Heaven, where everything is freely available for the needy. But the
atheists know that people have to work hard for all those presents. We of course want Libertaria to be established on Earth, not as a Christian Paradise on Earth nor as a Utopian workers paradise, but as the result of free markets at work.

Socialists love Santa, he looks like Karl Marx and Charles Darwin, and is dressed all in red, like a good communist, or like the devil himself. Indeed, isn't Santa an anagram of Satan? That's why many christians dislike Santa! As you say, Santa is a two-edged sword, a mix between socialism and catholicism, but also disliked both by catholics and socialists for various reasons.

Many socialist also dismiss Santa as an ideology for children. They see Santa's sleigh as a Trojan Horse, bringing subversive religious ideology into the homes of unsuspecting families. Of course, Santa's presents aren't magically made by happy little elves on the North Pole, no, they're produced in the sweatshops of Asia, by ruthlessly
exploited children and women. Father Christmas is a running dog of capitalism, the avuncular front for an international marketing racket that enriches the multinational conglomerates and their evil cohorts, i.e. the greedy little retailers who all put up all these Christmas decorations to lure naive families into this annual shopping spree.

---

From: Sam Carana <sam.carana@...>
Reply-To: Libertaria@yahoogroups.com
To: Libertaria@yahoogroups.com, libertaria@googlegroups.com
Subject: Re: [Libertaria] Adopting Santa as Libertaria's helper
Date: Fri, 30 Dec 2005 17:34:04 +1000

OK, Spot, I agree that Santa has sufficiently moved away from christianity to drop the stigma of altruism. In fact, many christians will complain that Santa is evil, the embodyment of market forces that seek to enslave us all, an anagram of Satan. That's why I said that Santa is a two-edged sword, cutting you with both references to religion and to profiteering.

 

Also, there still is this concern that Santa is not the real thing. After all, he works alone, doesn't he, as a kind of sole employer of elves who have to work hard to magically produce items that are often bad for children (obesity, tooth decay, etc). In that way, Santa is like a pusher of heroin, enticing people to eat more candy than is good for them. And is this candy-colored world really what we want?

 

Anyway, to remove the stigma of sweatshops and impulse buying, you could perhaps add two hands in a handshake, indicating that things occur because people want it, i.e. on voluntary basis, in agreement, by mutual consent and all those kind of concepts.

 

Yes, also add Santa 24/7 all year long. That will remove the false idea that Libertaria was only a once-a-year party, or a public holiday type of thing.

 

So, perhaps we could make it work, it's worth a try!

 

PS, I prefer the jolly Santa over the one in the banner. The banner one has the look of an idiot, which is exactly what we don't want. BTW, did you make the images, or are they public domain?

 

Cheers!

 

Sam