Allen Ginsberg/Santa Claus: Separated at Birth?

While slogging along on my jog this morning, it occurred to me that my recent KUOW interview with Jeremy Richards would lead many to conclude that being agnostic equals not believing in Santa Claus (I mean, I spend the entire ten minutes talking about how I dissed Christianity at age of 12 and never looked back).

Au contraire, so au contraire.

Over here at BP, we are huge believers in Santa Claus. We like the ones with fake beards, and we like the ones with real beards you can tug on and they won't turn sideways. We like Santa with his bowl-full-of-jelly gut and his pipe. We never grow tired of reading the pop-up version of The Night Before Christmas and never blush when we have to say "the moon on the breast of the new-fallen snow." We love walking by department stores on cold December nights and catching a glimpse of the long line of kiddies dressed up in their finest red velour waiting for a chance to sit on Mr. Kringle's lap and whisper their desire for Hotwheels crisscross track.

We loved, as children, Yes, Virginia, There is a Santa Claus and Miracle on 34th Street, especially Miracle on 34th Street, because that one proved there really, truly was a Kris Kringle.

And we loved most the animated Christmas special titled Santa Claus is Coming to Town because that one explained all sorts of mysteries such as why Santa was fat (adipose-loving wife), and . . . or, well, how an elf might aspire to be a dentist and find himself lost in a blizzard with some guy named Yukon Cornelius--but whoops, I think we've moved onto the 1970s version of Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer!  (The only thing I don't miss at all about my childhood Christmases are those incessant Coca-cola and Zingers commercials during A Charlie Brown Christmas. I mean, we had it rough in those days.)

Okay, that said, of course I was a total train wreck for two days when my son told me and my daughter there was no Santa Claus, then revealed to us unwrapped gifts from Santa. I mean, what the heck!? But he hadn't thought of a few things, and one is that the spirit of Santa cannot be doused by his deluge of inquiries and evidence. No f-ing way. Santa lives because Santa is a spirit; he is the good and giving in each of us.

Also, by the way, Santa doesn't give a wit whether or not you believe in God, or whether you think Christ is the Savior. He has more important things to worry about than whether you are going to heaven or hell, including managing all order of elfin creatures and responding to untold number of requests for electronic gadgets.

In other words, you can definitely be an agnostic and still believe in him.

Come to think of it, Ginsberg and Santa (see photos above) sorta share an affinity, wouldn't you agree?