The jury is out...

Many years ago, I had an opportunity to serve on a jury. I really do view it as an opportunity, too. I don't understand why so many people bitch and moan when a jury summons appears in their mailbox; for the average person, serving on a jury is the only chance we'll ever have to hold public office. Really, let's not forget that: Chances are about zero that you'll ever be President, probably less than 1% you'll serve as a lesser elected representative, but all you need to be part of the American judicial system is a mailing address.

Funny, while I was waiting to see whether I'd be called up for a jury, I found myself remembering Ned Roscoe. Ned Roscoe doesn't seem to have his own website or even Wikipedia entry, but he is a bit of a second- or third-rate California political celebrity. When I was in high school, Roscoe ran a chain of grocery store/gas stations known as Cheaper! stores. The prices were incredible, and there was some entertainment value in the Libertarian rants that Roscoe put on posters throughout his stores and on grocery bags. Roscoe later went on to shut down most if not all of these stores, and open a mega-chain of tobacco shops known as Cigarettes Cheaper! which I haven't seen lately, so they may have gone out of business. Roscoe was later one of several hundred failed candidates for Governor of California in 2003.

Why was I thinking about Roscoe? Well, one of his grocery-bag rants that I actually read all the way through (they would cover all five sides of the bag) was one entitled "Want to get out of jury duty? Bring this bag with you!" Upon that bag, he expounded at length about how the government doesn't really want you to know your rights as a juror. Though I'm not a Libertarian, a lot of my views about juries have been profoundly affected by what was on that bag, oddly enough. He pointed out that, as I said above, being on a jury made you a part of the government, and that our government, built as it with with those "checks and balances" that we love to talk about in civics class affords you incredible power as a juror. Those checks and balances aren't just for the President and the Supreme Court, but also for individual members of a jury! As juror, you have the right to disagree with the rest of the jury and hang the case, not only if you disagree on the facts, but if you even disagree on the moral basis of the law undergirding the matter. (It's funny, but I've always thought with all the fighting over the legality of abortion, the fact remains that you'd be hard-pressed to find twelve people picked at random out of the general populace that would be willing to put a woman in prison for having an abortion, regardless of the legal status. That's another matter, though.) Sitting in the jury selection room, I assured myself that if I were chosen to serve, I would have no problem hanging a jury if my conscience told me it was the right thing to do.

As it happens (and as I already said) I did end up on a jury that day. The case was actually largely unremarkable. A woman had been injured in an auto accident, and the defendant had already been found guilty; it was only our job to listen to the facts and decide what was the monetary value of the woman's suffering. How do you really put a price tag on suffering, though? This woman had gone through years of physical therapy, and various treatments by a variety of medical practitioners, but the lawyer arguing the defense made the case that the claims made by the plaintiff were frivolous, and had much more to do with her age than the after-effects of the accident. Indeed, the day of the accident she was X-rayed and it was found that no bones were broken, and the problems she had been having with her back since that day had to some extent been caused by osteoarthritis, if I remember correctly. She was claiming a problem with her foot that had developed several months after the accident was indirectly caused by the accident. It was all pretty strange, but she wanted money for time lost from work, pain and suffering, medical bills, and probably one or two other things I don't recall.

As the case ended, and we filed into the deliberation room, I was thinking, "Eh, this woman doesn't deserve squat. Her car was paid for, so at most, maybe a couple hundred for medical bills." Then something strange happened.

One of the older members of the jury (I think I may have been the youngest) was the first to speak up after the door closed. He actually said more or less what I was thinking. "This lady's nuts; we shouldn't give her anything!" Everyone sat down, nodded, and the murmured general consensus was that this would be a pretty quick deliberation.

And I lost it.

Somehow, I just couldn't let it sit at that, even though I largely agreed. "Look, the stuff about her foot's pretty ridiculous, but nobody is disputing the fact that she was hurt, right? Shouldn't she at least get some portion of her medical bills paid and a tad for pain and suffering?" Before I knew it, we were all in agreement that she deserved some sort of settlement.

I don't consider myself a strong personality. I'm not a leader by any means, and I wasn't elected jury foreman. Nonetheless, in the course of the next couple hours, I had the distinct mental feeling of holding the reins of a team of eleven horses and guiding them wherever I wanted them to go. My initial misgivings about holding silent in case there were others who had a dissenting opinion that they were unwilling to voice in the face of opposition gave way to a new misgiving. Was this a group of twelve people who simply would make the decision that aligned with the loudest voice in the room? When the deliberation was done, the plaintiff was awarded a few thousand dollars, but I kept having the feeling that every dollar she got was hung on my own words to my fellow jurors, who, whatever they may have felt about the case in reality, were far more interested in agreeing with my vocal majority of one and getting out of there.

Did I imagine it or was it real? If it was real, which I strongly suspect, does it say something about our attitude towards jury duty, or about our tendency towards a herd mentality in general? Personally, I don't like to think of the implications of either possibility. I fear often that people either don't think for themselves, or they simply don't care to think about anything beyond personal convenience. Like I said, I'm not a strong personality or a natural leader; what happens to our society when someone who is stands up and steers us towards their own personal ends?

Gloria in Excelsis Santa?

I briefly considered titling this one "He doesn't look a thing like Jesus, but he talks like a gentleman, like you imagined when you were young", but I decided it would be a bit too long. Santa Claus is a fascinating subject to examine in relation to Christmas, mostly because of the cultural impact of this mythic figure on Western culture. While Jesus is supposedly the reason for Christmas (after all, the word actually contains "Christ" in it), everybody knows that culturally, Jesus takes a backseat to the jolly man in the red suit. Heck, when I was a kid, I didn't even know that Christmas was Jesus' (supposed) birthday, but I sure did know that the big red sock I left by the fireplace on Christmas Eve would be filled with goodies come morning.

Many Christians are not real happy about Santa's overshadowing of Jesus at Christmastime, and really, it's understandable. As a Christian, you probably wouldn't want anybody overshadowing Jesus at any time, much less on his birthday. Some can take it a little too harshly, a la that old Saturday Night Live classic skit in which Dana Carvey's "Church Lady" points out the similarities between Santa and Satan (red suit, beard, etc.), finally highlighting that the two names are anagrams of each other. While I think that's over the top, I also think that every Christian who is raising a child should take some time to really think about the implications of mixing reverence of Santa in with worship of Jesus Christ, and be smart about it.

Years back, before I had kids, I heard a pastor on the radio take a hard line stance against Santa. His reason for doing so was actually very well-reasoned logically, and I took some time around my kids' first Christmas to discuss it with my wife. Look, this pastor said, you raise your kid with Christmas being a big focal point of every year, it's just the way things are. Every year, you teach your kids about Jesus, and how he comes into your heart with grace and love, and also about Santa, and how he comes to your house with presents and the spirit of giving. When your kids get older, and they find out all about Santa, and how you may have not been entirely truthful about him, and it will very likely call into question the now-related concept of Jesus. Surely you don't want that, right?

There's something profound about this to me. I've heard atheists point out, in a manner that I'm fairly sure is meant to be disparaging of Christianity, that Santa Claus is like God for kids. Kids can't really grasp the concept of God as well as adults sometimes can, so the story is given of a kind old man with a long white beard who lives far away in a magical land where everything is white and shiny, and you can't go there, but you can send requests to the man to use his magical powers to send you gifts of all kinds. If you're good, he will answer your requests, and if you're not, then he will punish you; and don't be mistaken in thinking you can fool him, because part of his magic is that he can see you wherever you are and whatever you do. I suppose one could draw a parallel between angels and elves if one desired as well, but the point is clear: Santa is God with the training wheels on.

Whether this suggestion truly is meant to be disparaging towards Christianity or simply a clever observation of a cultural phenomenon, I think it would be foolish to dismiss it outright. There's a truth there. Whether people are having their view of God formed by their early views of Santa, or people are imposing God-like characteristics on Santa subconsciously, that mixing of two separate but related phenomena is an issue that people of all faiths need to consider. Do atheists that celebrate Christmas include Santa Claus as part of the celebration, and if so, are they inadvertently teaching a sort of religion to their children? I would think that most atheists likely feel somewhat strongly against teaching religion at all, much less a pseudo-religion that no adult takes seriously. Do Christians want to risk the potential of confusing their kids by mixing orthodoxy with the oddities of a modern tradition? Does it really patch up the rift between the two concepts by mashing them together in some unlikely fashion?

Of course, while having Santa visit the crèche may be silly, the idea of an overtly Christian Santa Claus is not a completely new concept. In fact, as most people know, he has his roots in Saint Nicholas, a fourth-century church leader who was known for his generosity to the poor. In an apocryphal story, he once reached through the window of an impoverished local family with three daughters and put some gold coins in their stockings hanging to dry by the fire so that they could have dowries. Later he was canonized as the patron saint of children. The values that Nicholas stands for are values that Christians can get behind, and probably many non-Christians as well. Does that kindness and generosity form a part of what Christmas is about? Is that what we think of when we think of Santa?

The other day, my family was all together in the car, and the song "Santa Claus is Coming to Town" came on the radio. My wife leaned over to me and asked, "Promise me we'll never use Santa Claus to threaten our children?" I knew what she meant, and agreed. The Bible says in Romans 5:8, "But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us." That's the generosity and selflessness of Jesus, "Who, being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be grasped, but made himself nothing, taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness. And being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself and became obedient to death--even death on a cross!" (Philippians 2:6-8) Are we going to use the holiday to teach about the unconditional love and selflessness of Jesus, and at the same time mix in the image of Santa Claus as a man who clearly has the resources to bring gifts to every child in at least North America, but might decide not to bring anything to your child because she had the bad judgment to pull the cat's tail one week before the Big Day? Is this holiday icon meant to embody the values of Christian charity and the spirit of giving, or is he a capricious and judgmental bastard that extorts good behavior out of children in Skinnerian fashion?

No wonder so many people grow up to have a warped sense of God as the above-implied white-bearded judge on a distant throne who demands strict controls on your behavior! So many parents are unknowingly (or maybe even knowingly in some cases?) teaching their children the moral laws "Be on your best behavior in order to receive rewards. Give to others so that they will want to give to you." and the worst of all, "There are certain times during which you need to be on your best behavior more than others so that you can earn the right to be loved." Doing the morally right thing is a value in itself, and one that is not meant for special occasions. And love, true love, is not conditional.

Santa will be visiting our house this Christmas, but not as a judge, not as a means of payback for good behavior. Santa will hopefully be an iconic representation to our children of what it looks like to love unconditionally, give unselfishly, and honor the spirit of celebration of the birth of our Lord and Savior by bringing a merry Christmas to all. And to all, a good night.