I think everyone has their pet peeves, the little shit that irritates them disproportionately. One of mine has been showing up regularly this holiday season:
Santa Clause
A clause, for all of you who were too busy secretly masturbating to pay attention in High School English, is a sentence fragment that contains subject and verb. Because of legislators’ and lawyers’ tendency to write complex, prolix sentences, it has taken on a strong association with law generally (e.g., the “elastic clause,” the Establishment Clause, the Due Process Clause) and with contract law in particular. In the latter, buried somewhere in the fine print, is a provision that permits them to sue you for your house, car, life savings, and comicbook collection if you are 48 hours late on a payment, or something equally nefarious. Add in the idea of the “public policy contract”-- that even if you don’t sign a piece of paper, in agreeing to receive a service from a professional or tradesman, you are agreeing to what a reasonable man could expect through common knowledge of such service, including what reasonable charges and conditions may apply.
OK, got that? Switch gears:
Nicholas, Bishop of Myra, was an interesting dude. He loved children (and apparently not in the sense that later priests and bishops are accused of doing so) and rescued a few young women from loathly arranged marriages. He famously is alleged to have slapped archheretic Arius in the face during arguments at the Council of Nicaea. And on December 6, 342 AD, he passed on to his reward, being acclaimed as a saint by friends and followers. (What Arius thought has not survived the test of time. ;))
With his love for children and penchant for gift-giving, and with a feast day in December, he early on became associated with holiday gift-giving, and, though a slender, ascetic man in life, early assimilated the characteristics of a rotund, jovial Winter Solstice demigod or fey popular in several northern European traditions.
And Hagios Nikolaos --> Sanctus Nicholas --> St. Nicholas and variants in most European languages. Including Dutch, where Nicholas became a relatively common name, with the nickname Claus.
The son of the Episcopal Church Bishop of New York, Clement Moore, back in the 1800s, did a sort of H.L. Mencken/Dorothy Parker/Washington Irving-like column for one of the NYC daily papers. Casting about for a holiday piece, he composed a poem entitled “A Visit From Saint Nicholas.”
Instant tradition: The Santa Claus myth was born. Complete with eight tiny reindeer and all the trimmings. Though the jolly old gent spent the remainder of the 19th Century looking like a vaguely sinister plutocrat wearing heavy winter garb, the graphic artists associated with the Coca-Cola Co. put out some holiday-themed promotions that resulted in the modern image of the old bird.
And every. frigging. entertainer. on. the. planet has for the last half century had to come out with a Christmas album, hit single, movie, TV series episode, special, or what-the-fuck-ever. From Gene Autry’s song about a caribou with erythrorhinitis to Burl Ives prostituting himself to something involving Frosty the meeting the Abominable (Snowperson in each case, of course).
Enter Tim Allen. Standup comic, wannabe comic actor. Gets a cute idea: everybody knows about contracts with hidden clauses, and your obligation to meet unwritten contracts that are standard practice for services from someone in a service industry. And, of course, there’s gotta be a Santa. (Why, I’m not totally clear. The Three Wise Men tend to cover Latin America, there are other holiday gifter legends in other cultures – heck, for all I know, the Christmas Wombat shows up on a jetski powered by magical platypuses to bring Australian kids their midsummer Christmas treats.)
Be that as it may – if you’ve accepted Santa’s gift-delivering services, reasons Mr. Allen’s plotline, you’ve entered into an unwritten contract with him. And in that contract, of course, there’s a trick clause. Since there has to be a Santa, if you do anything that kills, maims, injures, disables, or otherwise incapacitates the jolly old elf, well, you’re obliged to replace him.
That, according to Mr. Allen’s extended shaggy-dog riff on the classic “Santa always comes through” theme, is the Santa clause.
It’s a fucking PUN.
Clause, as in one of those things in fine print in legalese that trips you up. Versus Claus, nickname for Nicholas, designator for the fictional inhabitant of the North Pole.
I swear, if I see one more person refer to the legendary figure who dresses in red trimmed with white fur, pilots a flying 8-RDP sleigh, has a magical TARDIS-like bag that can be carried by one man but contains enough items of conspicuous consumption to fulfill the covetous dreams of every man, woman, and child in America, Canada, Western Europe, and Lower Bumblefuck, by writing “Santa Clause,” I will scream.
If someone decides to argue against supernatural entities in GD by making snide comments about most people over the age of 7 don’t believe in Santa Clause, I plan to go in there and explain to that person, not about St. Nicholas and the difference between historical figure and legend surrounding him, but about the unfortunate reality that Tim Allen made that stupid movie, which unfortunately does exist. And I don’t much care if it hijacks the thread. If the person cannot take the time to spell what he’s ridiculing correctly, I feel absolutely no obligation to him to educate his lazy ass. I’ll simply assume he’s making a false statement about the existence of the Tim Allen movie(s), which much as I’d like to believe otherwise, do in fact exist.
It is a shitty pun. An ingenious premise, which barely stretched to make a good light seasonal comedy. Which he then managed to milk for two sequels (since his career was on the rocks by them).
Claus is a name. The term clause is a common noun, useful in language studies and law.
There is no person designated as “Santa Clause.” The four things on this planet that bear that appellation are (1) the pun on Claus/clause that inspired Tim Allen, (2) the movie based on stretching this gimmick beyond all hope of redemption, (3) the two sequels to the above, which strain it even further.
There.
I feel a little less Grinchy now.
