The North Pole Panopticon: Why Santa is Creepier Than You Remember

Let’s be honest: American Santa Claus is unsettling. It’s not just the sight of an overly-jolly old man breaking and entering; it’s the entire Santa Industrial Complex that feels…icky.

We recently had a discussion during an internal staff meeting about the guy (spoiler alert: he’s not real). For many of us, the tradition left us with lingering feelings of betrayal, inadequacy and even fear.

It should be noted that there are a few of us on the team who have fond memories with Santa. But this article isn’t for those people. We’re talking to those of you who’ve always had an ick for old Saint Nick and haven’t quite been sure why.

You might be thinking, “gee, what a bunch of sticks in the mud these humanists are.” We assure you, our cynicism is sincere, because when you peel back the tinsel, the Santa myth is far more than a harmless bit of seasonal fun.

As we see it, these are our main gripes:

1. False Meritocracy. The American version of Santa Claus is most typically deployed as a threat against unruly children. When Mom and Dad’s disciplining doesn’t work, a bluff to call up Santa is a sure-fire way to course-correct a difficult child. 

As children, most of us are told that based on your deeds, good or bad, Santa will reward you or punish you accordingly. There’s a naughty list and a nice list (why not a ‘tried their best’ list?). Either way, the Santa Industrial Complex posits a world where there is structure, order and reward for good behavior. It suggests a logic that, much like the false idea of American meritocracy, crumbles under the lightest scrutiny. As comedian Philomena Cunk put it: “Santa has a list of good children and bad children. The good children will get lots of presents. And so will the bad children. In fact, the only ones who won’t get much are the poor children. That’s because Santa judges a child’s goodness based largely on parental income.”

You can’t blame children for failing to apply a theory of power to these fables. But we can blame the adults who lied to us anyway. (And it’s never too early to teach your kid about class struggle and solidarity.) 

2. Mindless Consumerism. The handshake agreement American children have with Santa Claus is that in exchange for obedience and good behavior, they will be lavished with tangible gifts – something shiny and plastic they can point to in the toy catalogue. Or, in the case of Gen-Alpha, a Roblox? Whatever that is?

It sort of perverts the whole idea of gift giving, when you think about it. A gift cannot be earned; that’s why they’re gifts. Wouldn’t this arrangement be more akin to a bribe? You could more appropriately call it a reward, perhaps? Either way, it’s at least a little obscene that we encourage this kind of accumulation of things and stuff in the first place (pray tell, what does a child need a whole bag of gifts for?), and even more troubling when capitalist consumption is posited as the reward for being good. 

3. Corruption of Generosity + Spirit of Gift-Giving. Santa steals the credit and meaning of gift-giving from parents. Of course some of our parents approached this balance differently; Santa would only deliver the small gifts, while the large gifts were clearly signed by Mom and Dad. Regardless of how your caregivers opted to share credit, the Santa myth removes the personal element of gift-giving to chilling effect. 

With Santa in the picture, gift-giving becomes transactional, and the care, labor and love that goes into the act is made invisible. It encourages a type of gift-giving that serves to ‘check a box’ out of obligation, rather than demonstrate one’s knowledge, love and appreciation for the recipient.

Both parent and child suffer in this dynamic; the parents having to redirect gratitude and joy to an imagined patriarch to keep the myth going, and the child being robbed of the chance to appreciate the real-world love and effort of a gift thoughtfully (and selflessly) given. And people wonder why children are ungrateful!  

4. Surveillance. He sees you when you’re sleeping. He knows when you’re awake. You’re five years-old and an elusive old man who lives far, far away is surveilling your every move and keeping the score. You can’t see him, but he can see you. Basically: a Panopticon.

Creepy AF, right? In recent years, the Santa Industrial Complex has leveled up its surveillance game (perhaps in response to know-it-all kids who have been able to reason themselves out of believing in an omniscient, all-seeing Santa), with the introduction of Elf on the Shelf. A marketing ploy turned into a widespread parental crutch, and now the subject of endless Tik Toks where parents milk their children’s emotional outbursts for engagement, Elf on the Shelf is a designated spying deputy for Santa. Critical for the act to work, children are told not to touch the Elf, or else it will “lose its magic.”

The critiques of Elf on the Shelf are endless; Washington Post reviewer Hank Stuever deemed them “just another nannycam in a nanny state obsessed with penal codes” while academics argue that the Elf could condition children to normalize the surveillance state and be less protective of their own privacy.

We’re not saying Santa’s an NSA lackey. We’re also not not saying it. 

5. False Belief. Perhaps our biggest beef with the big guy is the fact that he’s not real. Yeah, we’re a humanist organization, and most of us who work here are definitionally atheistic, and some of us were burned by having religion pushed on us when we were young. But have you ever considered what this sort of revelation does to a child? 

It’s an occasion most of us remember – learning Santa isn’t real. Several of us recall immediately wondering what else this meant our parents were lying to us about. It might’ve sparked further introspection about supernatural belief for some (so thank you, I guess?). For those of us who weren’t stewing in religion at the time, it challenged what little perspective we had on the moral hierarchy of the world. You mean none of this matters? There’s no order to any of it? 

Our screed begs the question: if not Santa, who? What? As the parents on our team made sure to mention when we had this conversation, it’s hard to be the only kid in class whose parents insist on de-Santa-fying. To submit your child to that lifestyle is to rob them of precious memories, joy and tradition.

While that may be true and unfortunate, most secular parents are used to working around Christian hegemony and creating other vehicles of meaning-making for their children. One of the moms on our team described an annual holiday tradition wherein her family celebrates the holiday traditions of a different country, dining on the cuisine and learning more about its festivities. How wonderful is that!

We’re not saying Santa should be abolished or cancelled (even if he totally deserves it). We are, after all, humanists. To the extent that Mr. Claus is a human (yes, even a fictional one), we believe he deserves the same dignity and rights as everyone else. But no one’s above criticism. And we didn’t even get to the labor conditions at the North Pole…