a slight rant if I may about Christmas.

[Lionel Mandrake]

6. Once upon a time,

Christmas was a religious holiday (holy day), a Mass for Christ, and it still is for many people.

For others, Christmas morphed into a time for adult revelry and drinking, then into a family-oriented occasion with Saint Nicholas, and, finally, into an occasion to spend money and support the economy. This final transformation involved the corruption of "Saint Nicholas" into "Santa Claus".

To me, it's only a corruption in the linguistic sense. As an atheist, I have no objection to the secular figure of Santa Claus.

According to a popular Christmas carol, Santa Claus is omniscient:

He's making a list,
Checking it twice;
Gonna find out who's naughty or nice.
...
He sees you when you're sleeping
He knows when you're awake
He knows if you've been bad or good
So be good for goodness sake

When I was very young, I would worry each year about whether I had started being good early enough to fool Santa Claus. I never worried like that about God.