Stood in a store checkout queue yesterday, my attention was naturally caught by a cute boy – luxurious brown hair; soft, creamy skin; enormous blue eyes; maybe 5 or recently-turned 6. His mother, stood in front of me in the queue, was piling groceries (high-fat / high-salt ready meals, but that’s another comment) on the conveyor belt. The boy, his attention suddenly captivated by a Labrador puppy playing by the door, wandered single-mindedly in its direction. His beaming smile of delight as he stretched an experimental hand towards one of the puppy’s silky ears was heart-achingly adorable. The two, boy and puppy, looked at one another with intense, happy curiosity.

Both heads – one brown, one golden – snap in the direction of the boy’s mother, as she bellows at him across the store to come back “Immediately”. Blue eyes turn downcast. Head droops. Blush turns cheeks scarlet. Bottom lip protrudes. Boy gets a rough yank by his arm: “Santa Claus doesn’t visit naughty boys”.

The concept of employing the ostensibly kind and jovial (yet capriciously totalitarian) Santa – the all-seeing, all-knowing, surrogate authority figure – to condition a child’s behavior, exemplifies the imposition of the social order, at work through the vehicle of parental control.

Values are non-existent outside the parent’s whims. What constitutes being “good”’ and “bad” means only “obedient” and “disobedient”.

How much difference is there between training a new puppy and raising a child in contemporary society? Both are meticulously disciplined through a system of reward/punishment, treat/threat, affection/fear, to comply unquestioningly with the random orders of the adult who owns them. If you obey, you are “good” and will be rewarded. Obedience is the highest possible value.

Society does not just expect obedience from the very young child, but demands it from young people of all ages, with the intention that once they are released from the parental home, they will be sufficiently conditioned to fulfill the role required of them as products of the system: work, pay taxes, engage in socially-accepted leisure activities, marry, invest in real estate, be good consumers, produce more offspring…and train them to continue the cycle…in perpetuity.

For the child, Santa Claus equates to the modern State. Apparently beneficent – provided you behave, unquestioningly follow orders, and fulfill your assigned role – it is ultimately only desirous of passive submission – and will use every form of guile and deception to ensure your compliance.

Ho, Ho, Ho.