Confessions of a Liberal Puritan

This isn't exactly profound, but I couldn't help but wonder what's going on, when I saw two brand-new holiday movies on cable last weekend, both centering around the idea of a supposedly 30-something son and successor to Santa Claus courting an unsuspecting prospective Mrs. Claus. I know that two very similar movies isn't exactly a firm-and-fast pattern or indicative of a general trend, and they'll have to go some to come anywhere near the countless remakes of "A Christmas Carol" that continue to show up each year. But still, I think it's worth a look.

The Hallmark channel gave us Steve Guttenberg as "Nick" in "Single Santa Seeks Mrs. Claus" on Saturday night, and then ABC Family channel gave us Tom Cavanagh as another "Aw-shucks-just-call-me-Nick" in "Snow" on Sunday -- both of those T.V. movies to be re-run many times over during the rest of December. (And I see George Hamilton is playing Santa on Lifetime later tonight. Okay, so not a young Santa, but unless he's gained a lot of weight and lost his tan since the last time I saw him, George is still pretty far removed from the jolly fat man known to popular advertising since the Victorian age).

I have to admit, to begin with, that I didn't grow up believing in Santa Claus -- Christmas gifts marked "from Santa Claus" were always known to be from Dad (wink, wink, nudge, nudge) and "from Mrs. Claus" meant a gift from Mom (wink, wink, know what I mean, eh?), in addition to whatever other gifts they gave us under their own names. "Santa Claus" in our house was only a very mildly amusing joke to be shared between parents and children, with none of the elaborate pretense I've heard other people fondly reminisce about.

So, I don't really get the appeal of most Santa-centric holiday specials.

I like the songs and animation in the Fred Astaire-narrated "Santa Claus is Coming to Town" and the "Snow Miser" production number in "The Year Without a Santa Claus", but I don't go all warm and fuzzy at the thought of the old guy at any time. And "Miracle on 34th Street" (with Natalie Wood or Mara Wilson, take your pick) is really more about the mom's romance with the lawyer, after all.

I can talk about Santa as a Jungian archetype or as a personification of childhood desires and fears or a continuation of pre-Christian deities under a new name (or even as a symptom of the optimism and longing to believe in endless resources and eternal fresh starts of the American mind-set), etc., and begin to understand -- on a strictly intellectual level -- why other people might think he's important or a good thing to lie to their kids about. But I really don't get it.

(I do, however, believe in the Grinch and in his transforming moment of clarity, as the Whos sing their song regardless of gifts and Santa Claus or lack of same. Boris Karloff's narration brings a lump to my throat every time.)

What I do get is the attraction (especially for women over 30 -- and I'm WAY over!) of the boyfriend who turns out to be Santa-in-training. It's the compelling charm of the comfortably rumpled, slightly goofy-seeming, really kind and decent guy who's great with kids and endlessly patient with human foibles. Plus, he's a man with a higher purpose, committed to making the world a happier and nicer place, AND he knows how to fix stuff! He's the ideal domestic partner, if you can just get rid of the whiskers and grandfatherly appearance and make Santa a virgin (well, more or less) again.

So, enter the 30-something, lonely, single Santas, eager to make a lifelong commitment to the right woman, if only she can bring herself to believe that he's not too good to be true and in need of thorazine for his Santa-mania.

I get that. After all, I taped and watched both of those movies, and I rarely watch movies with "Santa Claus" anywhere in the title or cast of characters. I see it as a continuation of the discovery I made some years ago, when I first stumbled on re-runs of "Furniture to Go" and "Men in Tool Belts" on The Learning Channel, and found myself thinking, "Hubba-hubba! Middle-aged guys who talk about classic movies and fix stuff around the house! Now, that's incredibly sexy! Why did I never realize this before?", and it occurred to me in that moment of clarity that my new perspective on what's desirable in a guy might be related to the fact that I'd passed my 35th birthday.

But "Santa-as-sexy" is something I never would have imagined on my own, I think, and yet it seems to be "all the cool, new thing" this year. Rather than the iconic grandfather-figure or extension of popular Father-God imagery of an old guy with a white beard, there seems to be a market for -- and some kind of psychological or sociological need for -- the younger, available, and goofily attractive icon of the fantasy boyfriend.

If the traditional Santa represents our longing for (and awareness of the unlikelihood of) generosity-divorced-from-return-expectations, or prosperity-without-limits, or whatever, does the "Santa-gone-a-courting" figure mean that we're admitting that the ideal boyfriend or husband can only exist in the realm of myth and magic? That there simply are no guys anywhere near that cool in the real world as we understand it?

I dunno. But it struck me, at least, as interesting.