There’s a time and place for religious imagination—for “make believe”. It’s only human to embellish (that is, to beautify, to enhance) factual matters, and with long-term traditions the embellishment may get pretty elaborate.
When the facts are few and far between, or when they are very slim and easily overlooked, it’s only human that we relate them with more and more descriptive words or imagined supplementary details.
However, the embellishments may become so many and so elaborate as to disguise or distort the truth itself. That’s why in sworn testimony we call on God as our witness that we are telling the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.
Take the case of Nicholas of Myra. In the 4th century, in the Eastern Roman Empire, he was the Christian bishop of a town now known as Demre in Turkey.
There are many traditions about him, most focused on and praising his generosity and secret gift-giving. The best known is about how he rescued three girls whose family was so poor that they had no dowry money for marriages for them by dropping small bags of gold coins through the window of their home at night.
That’s about it. There are many embellishments in stories about his life, legends really, but very few “hard facts”. His feast is celebrated on December 6th or, in some places, December 19th.
This is the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth about the origins of the Santa Claus story—but, oh so many elaborations and embellishments over the centuries, so much imagination.
The majority of modern descriptions of St. Nicholas/Santa Claus are shaped by the famous 1823 poem, “A Visit from St. Nicholas”, and his visits are more associated now with the birthday of Jesus than Nicholas’s own feast day.
In any case, all this is a great illustration of the role of imagination in religious life and faith—and, in this case, the excessive role of imagination.
It’s only human that we relate the factual matters of our religious faith with descriptive words or imagined supplementary details. But, we don’t want the embellishments to be so many or so elaborate that they disguise or distort the truth itself.
The contemporary temptation is to hastily and carelessly discard religious traditions, customs, and teachings from centuries before as though they were purely works of imagination.
Patience! Of course, they were embellished. We can’t communicate effectively merely by citing the judicially correct, bare-bones, root truth—and especially when we’re trying to communicate (in the best sense of the word) a mystery.
It’s not a terrible thing to tell little kids about Santa Claus, but it would be if you swore on a Bible that it is “the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, so help me God!”
It’s not a terrible thing to teach kids standard catechism questions and answers and religious customs, but as they grow up they need to sift the root truths about matters of faith from religious imaginations that have embellished them over the years.
When kids grow up, they don’t usually abandon their parents for telling them so many detailed embellishments about Santa Claus, but they do sort out the “hard facts” and know that there really are in this world exemplary people like St. Nicholas.
20 February 2022