Disturbing thought about Xmas and Santa's origin

This morning my sister asked me if I knew Mrs. Santa Claus's name. According to Santa Claus Is Coming To Town it's Jessica, I said, but since he's based on an old Catholic bishop he didn't really have one. More likely he had an under aged boyfriend. We laughed. Then my devious and cynical nature took over.

I pondered further, to myself, that maybe Nicolas of Myra wasn't really being generous with all his gift giving to the poor - maybe he was paying them off to shut them up about what some priest did to their kids. Or worse, he gave out presents to lure kids himself. The poor have always been the target of opportunity for people getting up to no good. Who's to say what kind of spin the Vatican will put on all the child abuse cases and settlements a thousand years from now.

Granted, there are plenty of non-Christian traditions involving giving presents and young children's innocence that got woven into the mythology of Santa Claus but c'mon. Catholics love their traditions and have doing things the same way for ages. To be fair, there are plenty of Protestant preachers who are just as bad (sometimes worse) as the worst priests but A) they don't get as much press, and B) the Catholics have been around way longer and pretty much invented modern western religion and it's various holidays. Do we know anything about child molesting rabbis and imams?

Maybe it's time we got back to some good, old fashioned pagan values.