Jack Posobiec discusses the true meaning of Christmas and the role Santa Claus plays in it, and how we can keep the magic of the season alive in our day-to-day lives by keeping the message of Christ at the center of it all.
00:03:08.160All right, ladies and gentlemen, welcome aboard, and Merry Christmas Eve.
00:03:25.600Today on Human Events Daily, I want to talk about the true essence of Christmas, where Santa Claus, of course, plays his part.
00:03:34.300And we know, though, the real star of the show is Jesus Christ.
00:03:37.980Now, Santa Claus is a beautiful figure, derived from St. Nicholas, and he embodies the spirit of giving and goodwill.
00:03:48.220But Christmas fundamentally celebrates the birth of Christ, the cornerstone of Christian faith.
00:03:54.220And all of this stuff is, you know, kind of mixed up, and it is complicated, so I wanted to go through that quite a bit.
00:04:00.620We know Jesus was born in a humble major in Bethlehem, came into the world not with pomp or power, but in simplicity and humility, teaching us that true greatness lies in love and service to others.
00:04:12.020Jesus' message is one of peace, love, forgiveness, and charity, values that resonate deeply within the spirit of Christmas.
00:04:20.600And so when we keep, when we talk about keeping Christmas alive, we're not just talking about keeping Santa relevant, we're speaking of preserving the message that Christ brought into the world.
00:04:30.640His life, his teachings are the bedrock of why we celebrate his season.
00:04:34.880Santa Claus, derived from St. Nicholas, in his own way, reflects those same teachings.
00:04:40.660The gifts he bring symbolize the gifts of Jesus to humanity, a reminder of unconditional love, and also, by the way, building off of the gifts of the three wise men.
00:04:50.020However, the commercialization of Christmas can sometimes overshadow this core message, and that's where we need to be careful.
00:04:56.460And we can use Santa to teach children about generosity, just like Jesus taught through parables and actions.
00:05:01.920But we also have to educate them that the greatest gift of all was Jesus himself, who gave his life for the love of mankind.
00:05:10.600The joy of Christmas is not found in the wrapping or the gadgets, but in the act of giving, in the spirit of forgiveness, in the love shared among family and friends, and the love that Jesus showed.
00:05:21.500And we need to show that love, and we need to show that as well.
00:05:26.120And a great way to do that, an important way to do that, to keep the magic of Christmas lasting beyond the season, but also something that lasts in our day-to-day lives, is telling the true story of Santa Claus.
00:05:38.960And that's something that I wanted to do here on the program today, not only explaining the origins of Christmas the way that we celebrate it, but also talk about the origins of one of, not the central, but one of the central figures of the Christmas holiday today, Santa Claus, who was, of course, based on the very real Saint Nicholas, whose tomb, by the way, may have actually been found earlier this year.
00:06:07.760And so, here on today's program, we're going to give you the truth about Christmas and the truth about Saint Nicholas.
00:06:17.240So, I hope you will enjoy. Our guest for the full hour will be the great Dr. Taylor Marshall. Stay tuned. We'll be right back.
00:06:37.760All right, Jack Posovic back live Christmas Eve.
00:06:59.720We're talking about the truth about Christmas and the truth about Saint Nicholas.
00:07:07.200And I knew that the way to really tell this story was to bring the man on who literally wrote the book.
00:07:13.340His name is Dr. Taylor Marshall. He joins us now. Taylor, how are you?
00:07:17.600Jack, I'm great. Merry Christmas to you.
00:07:44.840That occurs on January 5th, celebrating the twelfth night of Christmas.
00:07:49.020So some people get that confused. But yeah, December 25th begins, does not end, the Christmas season.
00:07:57.020Well, and this is a huge, actually, it's so great that you brought up Shakespeare because, you know, people know Twelfth Night.
00:08:02.020But it's like we have this sort of, it's almost like the detritus of Christmas traditions and culture all around us.
00:08:12.400And people know the song, the 12 days of Christmas. People know about Twelfth Night.
00:08:17.360My kids love the chipmunk version of the 12 days of Christmas.
00:08:20.600But it's like we don't know how to put it all together because, you know, and Catholics, okay, you know, Advent, and we have the four candles, and that's the season, and then Christmas starts.
00:08:31.660But it's like we kind of seem to have forgotten that it actually does all fit together, that these are not just, you know, random pieces of traditions that have carried on.
00:08:43.020And at one point, it was very common for Christians to, in fact, celebrate all of these things in concert, wasn't it?
00:08:51.240Yeah, I mean, I think the modern-day Christian living in a postmodern context says Christmas is about Jesus Christ.
00:08:58.920It's all about Jesus. Jesus is the reason for the season.
00:09:01.640And then there can be, among certain groups, a rejection of everything that is not obviously connected to Jesus Christ.
00:09:10.920And as you just said, there's this giant puzzle.
00:09:13.600There's this matrix that's built around Christmas with Advent and the 12 days and Epiphany, and that's been broken apart.
00:09:21.100And so these pieces are kind of lying on the table.
00:09:23.940And what we want to do today, especially with St. Nicholas, is show that there is a cohesive, not only preparation with Advent, but a season of Christmas.
00:09:33.880And that the traditions, and especially the tradition of St. Nicholas, known in our culture as Santa Claus, is deeply rooted in Jesus Christ, who is the reason for the season.
00:09:45.360And I think those of us with kids and families and everyone who's a Christian can better incorporate and see how all of this used to fit together without all of the commercialism and secular appropriation.
00:09:59.980It's about taking it back and finding out, for example, St. Nicholas is perhaps one of maybe top 10 most heroic Christians in the last 2,000 years.
00:10:11.880They don't know that he delivered young women from sex trafficking, that he is the patron of sailors and mariners, that he gave gifts to children, that he was imprisoned during the Roman persecution and was rotting in a jail cell, that he was part of the renovation of the Roman Empire under Constantine, that he was a fighter against heretics.
00:10:34.360So many great, true historical stories about St. Nicholas are lost and sort of reduced towards commercialism, which is all about buying stuff at the mall and giving it to other people.
00:10:46.540And there's a root of truth in St. Nicholas as a gift giver.
00:10:50.880But I hope today that we can show that Jesus is the reason for the season and St. Nicholas is one of the greatest Christians, greatest bishops in the history of the church, pointing people to Jesus Christ.
00:11:04.840And that's why he's situated around Christmas.
00:11:08.700And let's address that one right on then.
00:11:11.320So the main tradition, even beyond nativity scenes and the 12 days and Advent and all the rest, the main thing that everyone around the world associates with Christmas is the tradition of gift giving.
00:11:30.860This is the one central thing that is held true for the entirety of the history of Christmas.
00:11:38.200So here's a question that I have, because every year when this happens, and you and I did that fantastic and award-winning documentary episode about the history, the true history of Halloween, where we debunked the idea that Halloween was pagan in its basis.
00:12:11.340Is this tradition of gift giving Christian or pagan?
00:12:16.220Well, the tradition of gift giving at Christmas is not originally tied to St. Nicholas, who also was a gift giver, and we'll talk about that today.
00:12:25.340The tradition of gift giving is seen in the canonical Gospels, right?
00:12:31.180When you read the Nativity story in the Gospel of Matthew, the Gospel of Luke, but in Matthew, the wise men, the magi come from the east.
00:12:39.640They're following the star, and they bring gifts, gold, frankincense, and myrrh, and they present them to Jesus Christ literally as birthday gifts.
00:12:49.180And so the notion of gift giving actually went from the first day of Christmas, as we discussed earlier, December 25th, all the way to January 6th, which in historic Christianity was called the Feast of the Epiphany or the manifestation to the three kings, the magi.
00:13:34.220And as people might rightly know, if you've seen like Gladiator 2 or any recent films about the Roman Empire, human sex trafficking was a big deal.
00:13:44.960Still is today, but back then especially was.
00:13:47.100And for poor families that could not afford to place their daughters in society, provide dowries, et cetera, you know, these young women, it wasn't just like go be a barista or go to get a BA in journalism.
00:13:59.960These young women often were turned out into the streets, were sold sometimes by their family.
00:14:05.460And in the original story of Nicolaus, he as a young pastor is aware of girls from poor families having to go into this horrible lifestyle.
00:14:16.740And so he identifies a certain family and he sneaks into their house, doesn't mention the chimney, doesn't come down the chimney, but he does sneak in the house.
00:14:25.300And he leaves a certain amount of money as the oldest daughter is coming of age, which provides their family to place their daughter in society and for her to get married.
00:14:34.900And the man who's poor has three daughters and Nicholas sneaks into the house and is leaving this gift of money to prevent these girls to being sold into sex trafficking, prostitution.
00:14:46.320And on the third daughter, the dad stays up and he catches Nicholas in the house because he's curious on who's doing this.
00:14:53.220And it reveals to the father and to all of history that the anonymous sacrificial giving to preserve chastity and to promote matrimony is this humble pastor, this bishop named Nicholas of Myra.
00:15:09.900And he has great concern, he himself came from a very wealthy family, so he was a man of means and he chose to become poor, celibate, chaste, and to give away his fortune rescuing young girls in this case.
00:15:28.740And from this story comes the idea, you know, you have the three wise men bringing gifts to Jesus, but then this idea that this generous Christian pastor is sneaking into the homes to benefit children.
00:15:42.680And that's the origin story that gets developed over time.
00:15:52.780He died on December 6th in the year, what was that, 343 AD.
00:16:01.500And in the Catholic Church, often when a saint dies, they're given a saint's day on the calendar of usually the day of their death.
00:16:08.480And so because he died on December 6th, the feast of St. Nicholas is December 6th, which is at the beginning of December.
00:16:16.240And so over time, the church and Christians began to associate the feast of St. Nicholas on December 6th as at the beginning of the preparation of Advent, preparing for Christmas, and also reminded the church and the faithful that Nicholas is a gift giver.
00:17:19.200It's not even something that is done to them.
00:17:21.700And you have the parents celebrating it.
00:17:24.720The mom and dad, they're the business managers of that individual.
00:17:28.020And so when I look at the true story of St. Nicholas, Nikolaus, and the book is Nikolaus, by the way, everyone should go and get this thing.
00:17:38.340It actually teaches us something far deeper than just, oh, I'm going to give gifts to people.
00:17:44.620It's I'm giving gifts to people as an act of charity.
00:17:47.500And I should want to do that charity because of the goodness that it turns myself into and as a way to show the goodness of the Christians.
00:18:00.360And in fact, this has always been in times of tragedy, in times of plague, in times of real pandemics, by the way, that it was the Christians who always stepped up.
00:18:12.020And this was a key reason that people switched from the paganism to Christianity very early on.
00:18:18.520Constantine didn't force people to convert.
00:18:42.020All right, Jack Posobiec, Dr. Taylor Marshall, the truth about Christmas, the origin story of Santa Claus and St. Nicholas.
00:19:05.480And just as we were leaving the last segment there, I couldn't help but think that, you know, the direct tie between Nicholas and how he was saving girls from trafficking versus we live in a society today where OnlyFans and the Lily Phillips culture are prevalent.
00:19:23.860And you hear people celebrating it and then they'll still go and celebrate Christmas without seeing the, you know, you know, the glaring, you know, the glaring contradiction in terms between the two.
00:19:36.200And so, you know, Dr. Taylor Marshall, St. Nicholas, it's not just about giving gifts, is it?
00:19:42.180No, it's about, in his case, redeeming young women.
00:19:47.580But if you look at the whole scope of his life, it's redeeming culture, it's redeeming the Roman Empire, it's redeeming politics, it's redeeming everything.
00:19:59.460And in the book, it retells, it's a historical novella, and it retells how gritty and ugly ancient Roman culture was
00:20:09.340and how Christians like Nicholas were these bright and shining lights of hope and of redemption for people who were given over to idolatry, sexual immorality, slavery, all kinds of degenerate behaviors.
00:20:24.700And so I think it's absolutely fitting.
00:21:43.060So he goes from one of the wealthiest men to rotting in a jail cell on death row, condemned to be killed.
00:21:50.300And then Constantine arrives and Constantine makes Christianity tolerated and legal in the Roman Empire.
00:21:58.780And it's because of Constantine that Nicholas gets out of prison and gets a second half to his life.
00:22:05.420He gets another chance in this world to extend the kingdom of Jesus Christ.
00:22:10.560And because of Constantine, Nicholas goes back to his pastoral work and he becomes very important in the controversy over whether Jesus Christ is truly the son of God, which also roots Nicholas back to Christmas and fighting the Arian heresy.
00:22:25.200And there's a famous story where they're at the Council of Nicaea in 325 and Arius, the heretic, is there.
00:22:31.600And Arius is saying Jesus is not truly the son of God.
00:22:34.300And Nicholas was so perturbed and so upset, he stood up and slapped Arius across the face in front of a whole assembly of bishops because of the blasphemy.
00:22:46.360So we see here, I think there's definitely a masculinity, a presence.
00:22:55.120He stands for the truth and he stands for Jesus Christ, true God, true man, which ultimately is the message of Christmas, that the baby lying in a manger is not just a cute prophet, but that is the son of God, light of light, true God of true God.
00:23:17.460And this is why Nicholas has been so popular for almost 2,000 years.
00:23:23.660And the sad thing is, is basically the red and white ho, ho, ho, Santa was just a, it was an appropriation by the Coca-Cola company to sell Coca-Cola.
00:23:34.920And that's the association with the red and white.
00:23:36.980And it became a marketing scheme, a marketing plan.
00:23:41.300And unfortunately, as our culture became less and less Christian.
00:23:44.160Yeah, actually, actually, just on that real quick, that the, in, because, you know, as, as everyone knows, my wife comes from the Orthodox world, that the Orthodox, and they call him Ted Moroz, which is like Father Frost.
00:23:59.320He was essentially the same character in some ways.
00:24:02.480He's got a, a granddaughter in, in that tradition, and he always wears blue.
00:24:08.400So the red is very much a Western marketing tradition.
00:24:14.540Even, even traditional Santa Clauses, you can find nutcrackers and things that'll be green or more elf-like.
00:24:19.580You know, it really, and, and again, in the Orthodox world, you'll see blue a lot.
00:24:23.420Not always, but you'll see a lot of it.
00:24:25.160So the idea then that the red and white, that's really a modern marketing tradition.
00:24:30.880But I guess one of the questions that I have is, let's, so let's say folks are watching and they've got little kids or little grandkids.
00:24:39.040And, you know, they want to, you know, keep the idea of Santa Claus still alive for them, but they want to connect Santa Claus to Christ.
00:24:48.160And one of the things that I hear a lot is, you know, well, it's simple, the magic of Santa Claus, it's, you know, he's able to do what he does because of God, because he's been given the job by Christ.
00:24:59.800And that's something that you just, you never see.
00:25:01.960And then in every single adaptation, every year, there's like a new adaptation of Santa right now, but I've never seen one where they say, yeah, it was Christ who gave him that gig.
00:25:10.740What would you recommend to, to folks like that?
00:25:13.580Well, I'm working on a screenplay right now on.
00:25:53.900And then I think it's important to tell these stories to your children.
00:25:58.140You can, you know, you can give them the full, if they're older, the full kind of gritty edition of, man, there was, you know, a really bad culture at that time.
00:26:06.420And St. Nicholas was, was a powerful influence against it for Christ.
00:26:10.060But you can also tell them these stories about, and there's kids books of this as well, of, of Nicholas being a gift giver, of Nicholas being a champion for Jesus Christ, of Nicholas being a pastor.
00:26:21.600Just as you would tell of any other story of a Bible figure or a saint or an important person in our history, like telling our kids about George Washington or whatever.
00:26:31.860And that way, their understanding of Nicholas is rooted in truth.
00:26:38.000And of course, you can still have magical moments and, you know, St. Nicholas can still bring gifts.
00:26:43.460You know, we did, we did all that as our kids were young, but all of our kids along the way knew that Nicholas, like, again, do you believe in Santa?
00:26:59.680And I think teaching our kids that, I think the Eastern Christians have maintained that in the West, as we become more secular, the whole Coca-Cola, red and white, ho, ho, ho, Santa has taken over.
00:27:10.720I think it's very important that young children realize that St. Nicholas is a disciple of Jesus Christ.
00:27:19.100He is a servant and teacher and preacher of Jesus Christ.
00:27:46.280I think it actually is very enriching to see that not only is gift giving part of the Bible, it's part of our Christian tradition to redeem culture by gift giving.
00:27:57.560And that kind of guts out the commercialism of Christmas.
00:28:01.280It shows you that really gift giving should be something that is culturally powerful, reclaiming.
00:28:11.480You know, I had a funny kind of, I guess, situation where I took the boys out to go Christmas shopping.
00:28:21.660And Tanya was sort of doing a girls' night, Tanya Tay, and was with them.
00:28:26.340So I took the boys out, and I said, boys, let's go, and we're going to go get some Christmas presents for the rest of the family, so for the grandparents and the aunts and uncles and, you know, and for mommy.
00:28:46.000But little AJ, who just turned four, he got really upset as we were leaving because we got something for almost everybody on the list, actually.
00:28:54.300But he was saying, but, Daddy, we didn't get anything from me.
00:29:18.340I mean, he was, like, ugly crying at one point.
00:29:20.580But the point is you've got to push through it, and we did push through that.
00:29:25.440He may have got some candy afterwards at the Wawa.
00:29:30.660But the point is we have to push through that because you just have to instill it very, very early on.
00:29:37.740And hopefully that – I think that come Christmas morning when he sees them opening the presents, that he'll see the process put together.
00:33:42.740And so I think if we can be more mindful of Advent and restraint, then when we get to December 25th is really the time to throw huge parties.
00:33:52.580And so I think for families, I mean, here we are on Christmas Eve, but Christmas itself should be a religious holiday.
00:34:09.500So I think skipping out on church sends a bad message to your own soul and to your family.
00:34:15.740You need to come together and offer true divine worship to God with the community at church.
00:34:21.400So, you know, it's called Christ Mass.
00:34:24.800Christ, we know the word Christ, and Mass.
00:34:26.960That's the traditional Catholic service of the Holy Eucharist.
00:34:30.420So that Christmas is Christ and it's going to Mass.
00:34:33.340Now, beyond that, there's the 12 days.
00:34:36.700And we mentioned the 12th night, and it was, I'll kind of jump ahead.
00:34:39.24012th night was a time for people to kind of come together, you know, drink something warm, sort of say goodbye to Christmas.
00:34:47.040So I think there was a tradition of 12th night parties where people would have a big fire and maybe consume the end of all the leftovers and the celebration and sort of say goodbye to Christmas on 12th night.
00:34:58.400But also within those days, traditionally, there's a celebration of St. Stephen, who's the first martyr.
00:35:04.980There's a celebration of the Holy Family, Joseph, Mary, and Jesus.
00:35:09.340And it can be a good opportunity in the evenings to continue to read the biblical stories, to read spiritual reflections, sacred scripture.
00:35:19.740And then also New Year's Day, what is a holy day?
00:35:24.820That's the day on which Christ would have been circumcised, circumcised on the eighth day.
00:35:28.320And also in the Catholic tradition, it's a day honoring the Virgin Mary, saying, here's the mother of Jesus and everything she went through, pondering these things in her heart.
00:35:39.780So there's a reflection there as well.
00:35:41.860And some people give a gift every day in the 12 days of Christmas.
00:35:49.060I know kids would be really excited if they were getting a gift for 12 days, even if it were something small.
00:35:55.280And I think also probably the biggest thing, Jack, is to keep the spirit of Christmas and the joy of Christmas to leave up your decorations.
00:36:06.880And that's becoming much more popular now amongst Christians.
00:36:10.540It used to be like a day after, a couple of days after Christmas, take down everything.
00:36:14.660People are now leaving it up till January 6th to sort of extend the festive season.
00:36:20.200And that communicates to your children and to your friends and to your family.
00:36:25.280Hey, we are still celebrating the incarnation, the virgin birth of Jesus Christ.
00:36:32.240So, you know, be a little bit more strained up to December 24th.
00:36:36.480And then after that, pull out all the stops and do a lot of partying.
00:36:40.860At our house, my favorite day is December 26th.
00:36:43.960That's the day after everybody's left.
00:37:19.180Actually, Tanya Tay loves that because so we sort of as a kind of a small attempt, you know, people say this.
00:37:32.000And we – well, actually, no, people don't say it.
00:37:33.640I say it – that we make our small attempt to mend the schism every year.
00:37:38.040And people say, well, what do you mean, you know, Western Catholic and she comes from the Orthodox world.
00:37:43.260And I say, well, and we raise the kids Catholic.
00:37:44.920But one thing that we do, because for her whole family, celebrates the Orthodox Christmas, which is, of course, held on January 7th, so which is the day after Epiphany, also known as Old Christmas.
00:38:02.760Now, this, of course, is held this way because of the difference in the Julian calendar versus the Gregorian calendar.
00:38:11.300Basically, they stayed on the original calendar.
00:38:15.180And by the way, you do see this with a lot of stuff in history.
00:38:18.020You know, even when we – you know, when we did the series a year ago about the communist revolution in Russia, they call it the October revolution.
00:38:42.600And so it's – you know, but one thing that we do is we actually keep the tree up until Old Christmas, which was sort of around for a little bit of time after the calendar change came up.
00:38:58.080And I believe in England they celebrated Old Christmas for some time.
00:39:02.200And it's just something that we do, so it's at least going to be up until then.
00:39:06.460And then the kids will – the kids will usually get a little something else.
00:39:09.300We also do, of course, the St. Nicholas with the shoes.
00:39:13.900We were actually in Florida this time around because we had a Turning Point event.
00:39:17.260But St. Nicholas found us even down there in Florida, which is a great way of introducing St. Nicholas to the kids, by the way.
00:39:26.500And so all of these are great traditions that people can do throughout Christmas, throughout Christmastide, meaning the name of the various days of the 12 days of Christmas, and it all falls under that.
00:40:11.680Yeah, it's a lot more chill as opposed to like Thanksgiving is – in the American tradition, of course, it's just one day, which is funny, by the way, because Tanya, not coming from the United States, she's like, what is this food and why do you only eat it one day of the year?
00:40:24.760But also why is it mandatory to eat it on that day of the year?
00:40:52.800Quick break coming up, but I want to get into that.
00:40:56.660Some of the different Christmas traditions that we, as Christians, should be just going all in because we're Christmas-maxing with Dr. Taylor Marshall here on Human Events Daily, the truth about Christmas.
00:42:15.600But the challenges we face as a nation are still here.
00:42:18.760In four years of chaos, the dollar has lost value.
00:42:21.180Inflation has run rampant, interest rates are through the roof, and wars raging across the globe.
00:42:26.540Trump has inherited an economy that's a total mess, and the burden to rebuild is huge.
00:42:31.740This isn't going to get fixed overnight, especially with the ongoing assault to our dollar from the BRICS nations and our growing national debt.
00:43:48.920So it's not just all fun and games this Christmas, and we talked about charity towards others,
00:43:54.460but what about charity towards family, and not just charity towards strangers, but we just had a massive election.
00:44:03.260We had a huge situation where people were at each other's throats.
00:44:08.680Mark Halperin has talked about families that were literally torn asunder in 2024 over whether you supported Trump or whether you supported Kamala Harris.
00:44:20.420And then in the wake of all that, we get Christmas.
00:44:24.780How do families that are dealing with this, that are truly suffering through this, how do they navigate Christmas?
00:44:31.380Yeah, I mean, this question goes all the way back to our medical crisis, you know, when there's masks and debates on, you know,
00:44:41.100should you get the injection or not get the injection?
00:44:43.260This has kind of been creeping up for years now.
00:44:45.520And, you know, in sacred scripture, and you also see with Mary, Joseph, and baby Jesus, a hospitality towards visitors.
00:44:55.920In this case, the three wise men, gold, frankincense, and myrrh.
00:44:59.360And in the biblical tradition and the Christian tradition, the wise men, the magi, they're from the East.