They said there'll be snow at Christmas
They said there'll be peace on Earth
But instead it just kept on raining
A veil of tears for the Virgin's birth
I remember one Christmas morning
A winters light and a distant choir
And the peal of a bell and that
Christmas Tree smell
And their eyes full of tinsel and fire
They sold me a dream of Christmas
They sold me a Silent Night
And they told me a fairy story
'Till I believed in the Israelite
And I believed in Father Christmas
And I looked at the sky with excited eyes
'Till I woke with a yawn in the first light of dawn
And I saw him and through his disguise.
-From I Believe in Father Christmas,
by Emerson, Lake & Palmer

Setting: A steamy courtroom near Lynchburg, Va.

"Oyez, oyez, the State of Virginia vs. Mr. G.R. Inch will now resume. All rise for the Hon. Judge Len Kaye."

"All right, sit down, sit down. Clarence ... err ... I mean, Mr. Darrow, you may continue the questioning of your client, Mr. Inch."

"Thank you, your honor. G.R., when exactly did you first begin to doubt the existence of Santa Claus?"

"When I became a Christian, sir."

An excited buzz shoots through the packed courtroom.

"Order! Order! Another outburst like that, and I'll clear the courtroom! That's better. Please continue, Mr. Inch."

"Yes sir. Well, actually, I do believe in Santa Claus. And that's the problem. It was Santa Claus who stole Christmas, not me."

The prosecution's lead attorney, the corpulent, sneering Gerry Failwell, leaps to his feet.

"Objection! Mr. Claus is not on trial here. Your honor, we have dozens of witnesses who saw Mr. Inch steal Christmas."

"Sustained. Strike that last remark from the record. Mr. Inch, please restrict your responses to the matter at hand."

"Yes sir. Perhaps I should start over. Ever since I became a Christian at age 35, there is much about my new-found faith that confuses me. For instance, why don't we Christians celebrate Easter as the primary holiday of our faith? I mean, the Nativity stories are in only two of the Four Gospels. Paul never mentions them at all. Besides, it is not the birth of Christ that saves the world, it is the death and resurrection! That's when we should be exchanging gifts and decorating."

"Oh, brother. Not that tired canard. Your honor, Mr. Inch is simply repeating old clichés. We've heard all of this before."

"Is this going anywhere, Mr. Inch?"

"Yes, your honor. If I may, I'd like to quote Richard Halverson:

In the beginning, the church was a fellowship of men and women who centered their lives on the living Christ. They had a personal relationship with the Lord. It transformed them and the world around them.

Then the church moved to Greece, where it became a philosophy.

Later it moved to Rome, where it became an institution.

Next it moved to Europe, where it became a culture.

Finally it moved to the United States, where it became an enterprise.

We've got far too many churches and so few fellowships.

"There was a time when, perhaps, Santa did represent the Living Christ. Perhaps it was around the time of the Celts in ancient Britain, who practiced a wonderfully inclusive brand of Christianity long before the Roman Popes swept it away. In those days, Christmas was joyfully simple, almost pagan - but pagan in the good sense of the word: earthy, elemental, close to the Earth. Alive.

"This was a time of great winters - scientists call it a "mini-Ice Age." Crops were uncertain, life was harsh, pleasures were few. By the Winter Solstice, they'd already had several feet of snow and the winds from Arctic shredded the great European forests, blasting these early Christians with unfettered ferocity.

"But at the Solstice, something magical happened. The sun, beaten and battered for months, retreating in full flight before the onslaught of the Northern winter, rallied. He stood in defiance, wan and sickly and low on the horizon, and shouted hoarsely, 'No further.' And on that momentous day, he began to fight back. Each day featured a few precious more minutes of sunlight than the previous one. It was a hope the early Christians held through the dark days and dangerous nights of February and March.

"And, for the survivors, there was the miracle of rebirth - usually about Easter. The first sign was the appearance of the brave snowdrops, poking their white heads through the dirty patches of snow. Finally, at last, the now-triumphant sun warmed the Earth once again and the gray of winter turned to the verdant greens of Spring.

"Only a few tiny fragments of that epic battle endure - a conflict that was a very real matter of life and death to those early Christians. They survive in the folk songs and Christmas carols of the people."

Failwell painfully stands and glowers at Inch.

"I suppose the defendant is going give a concert now. Really, your honor, I must ..."

"Oh, sit down, Gerry. Go ahead, Mr. Inch."

"Thank you, sir. Echoes of those time - lost glimpses are still heard in this ancient English carol:

Down in yon forest be a hall
Sing May Queen May sing Mary
'Tis is coverleted over with purple and pall
Sing all good men for the new born baby
Oh, in that hall is a pallet-bed
Sing May Queen May sing Mary
'Tis stained with blood like cardinal-red
Sing all good men for the new born baby
And at that pallet is a stone
Sing May Queen May sing Mary
On which the virgin did atone
Sing all good men for the new born baby
Under that hall is a gushing flood
Sing May Queen May sing Mary
From Christ's own side, 'tis water and blood
Sing all good men for the new born baby
Beside that bed a shrub-tree grows
Sing May Queen May sing Mary
Since he was born it blooms and blows
Sing all good men for the new born baby
Oh, on that bed a young squire sleeps
Sing May Queen May sing Mary
His wounds are sick and sick, he weeps
Sing all good men for the new born baby
Oh, hail yon hall where none can sin
Sing May Queen May sing Mary
'Cause it's gold outside and silver within
Sing all good men for the new born baby."

"Did you hear it, your honor? That whisper of a time when all men and women were so close to the eternal that a few precious seconds more of sunlight was a cause of true celebration. On the Winter Solstice, in the dark mead hall of the Celtic Christians, hard-won gifts were exchanged - a tiny hand-carved figure, a scrap of colorful cloth, a candle to drive the cold winter away. Oh, those were Christmases to remember!"

"This has been a very moving little dog and pony show, Mr. Inch, but what exactly does that have to do with Santa Claus?"

"Nothing, Mr. Failwell. Nothing - except that the early Church Fathers and Mothers were very wise in selecting a date so close to the Winter Solstice - Dec. 25 - as the date of our Savior's birth. For it was on that date that the Living Sun broke through the darkness. Jeff Johnson calls it the "centerpoint" of all history, the spear-point that inserts the Risen Christ into death's dark night. From that moment on, the Light only grows stronger and stronger until someday soon there will be no room for dark anywhere in the universe."

Failwell's pitted face spreads into a ghastly, smirking smile.

"Exactly! That's why we have Frosty the Snowman and Macy's and Andy Williams and families going into debt to give each other gifts made by little girls making pennies a day in Indonesia! It's a celebration!"

"No sir, it's consumeristic orgy. They celebrate Christmas in countries where the Christian population is miniscule. It's a corporate holiday, Mr. Failwell, not a religious celebration. The 'mass' has long since been severed from 'Christ's Mass.'

"My mother has an enormous collection of Santa Clauses and Kris Kringles and Saint Nicks in various porcelains, stones, and resins. Most are very red and very jolly and very prosperous - like Pan or Bacchus. But there is one Eastern European version where he is very much like the old English Green Man or Jack o' the Green - the primordial symbol of life triumphant. Instead of red and white, this figure is dressed almost entirely in black, save for a few springs of holly. And instead of being corpulent with a bulging sack of heavily advertised toys, he's a thin little man with a single orange in his hand. And instead of standing and laughing and looking oh-so-prosperously jolly, he's doing a merry little jig. He's the Lord of the Dance, not the Lord of Lord & Taylor.

"That's my Santa Claus. Or perhaps he is Father Christmas or Sinter Klaus. This figurine revels in the giving, not the gift."

"Oh puh-leeze, Mr. Inch, spare us your pious platitudes."

"My apologies, Mr. Failwell. But I think there is an important point to be made here. It is the difference between transient happiness and joy. It's wonderful that Jesus was born. It's a matter of cosmic importance that He died and rose again in three days. The notion of a Caucasian wizard who dumps mountains of plastic gifts on the children of wealthy families, while their counterparts in Sub-saharan Africa are wasting away from AIDS is NOT a fitting symbol for the Lord of the Universe!"

"What you say, Mr. Inch, is positively un-American. In this time of great national crisis, to propose a radical plan that would put millions of hard-working Americans out of work, smacks of treason. Why, without Santa Claus, Osama bin Laden and the terrorists will have already won!"

Failwell beams broadly, glancing around the courtroom, basking in the crowd's smiling approval.

"Without Santa, perhaps we'd have to find the true meaning of Christmas, Mr. Failwell. This Santa Claus has become the defacto symbol of the Incarnation and I submit to you that that symbology is frighteningly close to blasphemy. We're talking about the King of Kings here, sir. We're not talking about a six-foot bunny with an egg fetish. We're talking about something that caused the Hebrews - who lived in closer contact with the Infinite than we'll ever live - to refuse to speak that holy name aloud. We're talking about the omnipotent, all-powerful Lord of the Universe here!

"To quote Anne Dillard: 'Does anyone have the foggiest idea of what sort of power we so blithely invoke? The churches are children playing on the floor with their chemistry sets, mixing up a batch of TNT to kill a Sunday morning. It is madness to wear ladies' straw hats and velvet hats to church; we should be all wearing crash helmets. Ushers should issue life preservers and signal flares; they should lash us to our pews.'

"When the Christ Child was born, most of the hosts of this world and the unseen world around us wanted Him dead. This tiny life was all that stood between the Prince of This World and his dreams of conquest. Should the unthinkable have happened, then, as they said in the Narnia books, we really should have had a land where it is always winter - but never Christmas."

Failwell snorts uneasily, but then looks at the floor. By now Inch's voice is barely above a whisper.

"One last quote, if you'll indulge me, your honor. It is in the form of an unexpected hymn found early in Boris Pasternak's towering Dr. Zhivago, tucked amid the epic stories of Zhivago and Lara and the Russian Revolution:

Rome was a flea market of borrowed gods and conquered peoples, a bargain basement on two floors, earth and heaven, a mass of filth convoluted in a triple knot as in an intestinal obstruction. Dacians, Herulians, Scythians, Sarmatians, Hyperboreans, heavy wheels without spokes, eyes sunk in fat, sodomy, double chins, illiterate emperors, fish fed on the flesh of learned slaves.

There were more people in the world than there have ever been since, all crammed into the passages of the Coliseum, and all wretched.

And then, into this tasteless heap of gold and marble, He came, light and clothed in an aura, emphatically human, deliberately provincial, Galilean and at that moment gods and nations ceased to be and man came into being - man the carpenter, man the plowman, man the shepherd with his flock of sheep at sunset, man who does not sound in the least proud, man thankfully celebrated in all the cradle songs of mothers and in all the picture galleries the world over.

"To reduce this Christ to Santa Claus - and an excuse to buy yourself a new Rolex - is unacceptable. And I will no longer be a part of this trivialization, sir."

"Ah ha! So you admit you stole Christmas, Mr. Inch!"

Darrow rises wearily to his feet.

"No sir, Mr. Failwell. Christmas was lost long ago, co-opted by consumers and capitalists and secularists. The greatest insult of all is that it wasn't stolen by these people, it was given away by the Christians themselves. They lost it without a shot being fired in anger.

"Mr. Inch didn't steal Christmas. No, his fervent hope is that we someday can find it again."

Judge Kaye bangs his gavel loudly.

"Having heard the evidence against you, Mr. Inch, and having, in a court of law, the opportunity to respond to your accusers, do you have any last words?"

"Yes sir. Merry Christmas to us all. And may God have mercy on our souls."

"Then it is the considered opinion of this court that, despite your flowery rationalizations, that you, Mr. G.R. Inch, are indeed guilty of attempting to steal Christmas. You are hereby sentenced to watch a loop of Vera-Ellen and Rosemary Clooney sing "Sisters" from White Christmas for 24 hours a day for the next two weeks.

"And after that, Mr. Inch, I want you to always remember, that yes, in Virginia, there is a Santa Claus.

"Court dismissed!"

I danced in the morning when the world was young
I danced in the moon and the stars and the sun
I came down from heaven and I danced on the earth
At Bethlehem I had my birth
Dance, dance, wherever you may be
I am the lord of the dance, said He
And I lead you all, wherever you may be
And I lead you all in the dance, said He
- The Lord of the Dance (Traditional English carol)