All that we really know about Santa is that he likes Coke.

   Oh Santa, what to do what to do. My wife and I had our first real conversation yesterday discussing what we'll tell our son about Santa. He's only 15 months old, so we didn't have to worry about it this year. For my part, I figure he'll hear the story and see enough movies on his own that we won't need to tell him the story, and we can put stuff in his stockings and under his tree from Santa, but it can just be a game and a story people like to have fun with during this time of year. If he ever asks, point blank, "Is Santa real?" I'll hedge a few times with "Well what do you think?" and if he presses, then I'll tell the truth. I'd like to lie to my children as little as possible.

   For me, that's not the Santa dilemma. For me, the Santa dilemma is coal.

   Does anyone ever get coal in their stockings? Does Santa ever actually tell anyone that they're a bad kid? I've never heard of that happening, not in "real life" and not in movies either. I can't remember if Tim Allen ever gave a kid some coal for being naughty, but I feel like it happened once?
   What a wasted opportunity! A parent with a bad kid, or a naughty kid, or a disobedient or defiant kid, could still give the kids presents from mom or dad, but if they withheld the presents from Santa, and put some coal in the kid's stocking, they could claim "we love you and gave you presents, but Santa didn't think you were a good boy this year." Has anyone ever done this!? They really should.
 
   So that gets me thinking about what makes a naughty kid bad or a nice kid good. Of course the parents could just decide if they were going to give a kid coal from Santa or not, but spoiler alert let's pretend like Santa is real. How does he decide who is good and who is not? There's basically two options:

1)  Half of the little boys and girls are good (nice) and half of the little boys and girls are not (naughty).

2) There is some point, or level, of "goodness" (niceness) that Santa expects us to strive for.

Option 1: half are good and half are not
There are so many flaws with this sort of reasoning. Most people that aren't in jail would probably call themselves good people. At least, most of the people that I associate with would call themselves good people. I am probably a bad example because most people I associate with are teachers or go to church or have a lot of societal norms that make them "good" people. But, is it fair that people who grow up in an environment that is more likely to produce "good" children are going to get presents while other kids are going to get coal? No. So, does Santa have some sort of a neighborhood/background/upbringing criteria that he follows? Only half the kids in my neighborhood are good, let's say.

Well, this would cause me, as a kid, to try to be very very good, but it could also lead to me, as a kid, wanting other kids to be bad. Or to be less good. That's not a good thing. Plus, it's not fair that a kid can't be judged as good or not without comparisons based on other kids. When you think about it, saying that only 50% of the kids are good means that only 50% of kids can be good. No matter what, half of all the world's kids can or cannot be good, and there will be some that are left out, even if they are trying.

Does trying not really matter then? Couldn't we all get organized and push the average level of goodness down, so we can have our bad fun but still get presents? There's lots of ways to manipulate such a system, it turns out.

One might counter with "Fine. Make it the top 25% who get presents, or the top 75% who get presents. This leads to all of the same issues that 50% had. So maybe Santa should just pick the percentage of kids that are good year-by-year? The percentage that falls on who was actually pretty good or not?

Ah, there we have option 2.

Option 2: There is some point, or level, of "goodness" that Santa expects us to strive for.
This is the one that really makes sense. None of those 50% issues come up here. So, the obvious question is "Where does Santa set that level?" It can't really be based on how relatively good one year is compared to the next, for all the reasons listed in Option 1. It has to be a fixed point of goodness.

Well, kids that steal and lie can't be good, right? But, every kid is going to steal some other kids candy or lie to get out of trouble or take someone else's turn with a toy. We can't expect them to be perfect little angels all the time. Does he set a limit of what can and can't be stolen? Or how many times we can steal and still be considered nice? There's probably some sliding scale like "you can take four of emily's turns at tetherball on recess or you can take one kid's lunch money" or some combination inbetween, right? I think that makes pretty good sense. Sure, it's extremely complicated and dense, but that's why Santa has magic and elves and stuff, right?

So then, the problem becomes "How are we to know what's good and what isn't? How can we tell if we are being good enough?" Well, with such a complicated system, we can't really check things off or try to match our past year with his goodness chart. So the game probably turns from trying to reach a certain level of goodness to just being as good as we can and hope that's good enough, right?

Now, I understand that Calvin and his trusty tiger had all of these discussions in a much simpler, more eloquent fashion (having a talking tiger makes these things easier). The way I see it, unless Santa has his level of "goodness" at Perfect, then he's allowing for any degree of badness. That can't be a good thing, right?

You probably know where I've been going with this for a while (and by "a while" I mean like pretty much way too long now), but this is a problem with God and Heaven that I don't think many people consider. If getting in to heaven requires being a "good person," most people would define their goodness as being "better than most." But, this system would send half the world to hell. Would the God of heaven only give half of the people a chance at Heaven? Or any percentage, wherever you set that benchmark?

So, make the requirements some level of goodness. But if that level of goodness isn't at Perfect, doesn't it allow for some amount of evil? Could I live a nearly-perfect life and then murder someone? If I am trying to do enough good just to allow myself some bad, am I really good? My goal is to balance enough good against my bad, meaning I really want to do bad, right? This is hard.

Merry Christmas. That's why Jesus came. He allows to be perfect by association. I don't think there are any good people out there. None at all, not by any sort of meaningful standard. I think Jesus was good because he was God, and he's the benchmark for goodness that we need, and he allows us to piggyback on his goodness. Now, you might not believe in Heaven or God or things like that, which is another conversation, but I was up last night thinking about Santa (who wasn't?) so we had this conversation.