Santa Claus through the Chimney

That tale about a fat guy, dressed in red with white trim, living at the top of the world, brought here by flying reindeer, coming down the chimney into the house of every child in the world on one night, carrying an enormous sack of gifts, is way too remote from current definitions of reality to be told without misgivings by parents.

And children, being as bright as they are and picking up everything, must have feelings at some level of being betrayed and deceived.

The imagery of the tale, however, is absolutely brilliant, and valid, on what I will call a spiritual or psychic or mythic or dream level. If you know the “forgotten language” of dreams, for example, the tale and all its imagery present no problems to either adult or child.

*The image of the chimney usually has it as being made of many rectangular red bricks, placed on top and beside each other, interlocking, as is appropriate to the spiritual path.

*Smoke rises up through it as if it were a prayer or other non-substantial communication rising up to heaven, or like the smoke from censers in a church.

*The fireplace is the focus, as it is named in ancient Latin, and is the central image in Alchemy where lead is refined into Gold. This also brings to mind those words of Plutarch that I love to quote, “...the Mind is a fire to be kindled...”

*This coming and going via the chimney like smoke is like the way heaven and earth communicate on Christmas night while we are “asleep.”

* Then there is also this fantastic matter of there being flying reindeer with these antlers branching upwards from their heads like mythic trees. If you see an elk, or a deer, with such antlers in a dream, you are surely seeing a symbol of spiritual development.

*A house itself may well be the most commonly occurring image in our dreams: the “upstairs” indicating thought, the ground floor indicating life at the ground level, the basement indicating the foundation and what it's all built upon.

But the hard everyday reality we experience in this era of returned social darwinism and materialistic science goes more like this:

“None of this fits the real world in which you're going to have to live. It won't get you a job or a marriage or enable you to support a family. Dreams and fairy tales and the spirit will not pay your bills. It's all superstitious humbug. If you don't listen to me, you're going to be poor, alone, and on the street with nothing. Just forget it. Grow up, get tough, and live in the real world.”