Santa Clausmas - Television Tropes & Idioms

Santa died for your sins.

A religious holiday episode which only mentions the not-overtly-religious trappings of the holiday, without the religion. Religion doesn't even crop up casually. This applies to all of the big Christian holidays.

This does reflect real life somewhat, as these days there are plenty of people from Christian backgrounds who are not particularly religious but still celebrate Christmas and Easter with parties and gifts and chocolate, as well as some who aren't Christian at all but do the same. After all, few say no to free presents. Or chocolate. *

Contrast with Do They Know It's Christmas Time?.

Examples

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Literature

The Whos from How the Grinch Stole Christmas! celebrate a non-religious, albeit warm, caring and good-natured, version of Christmas.
C. S. Lewis wrote a couple of essays highlighting the commercialization of Christmas in the 1950s. In fact, this problem became a subject for concern very soon after the "old-fashioned" Christmas-as-we-know-it was invented in the 19th century.
- Which was still better than the older Christmas traditions of 'get drunk off your ass and burn shit'. The main reason for the commercialization was to avoid property destruction that the holiday caused before.

Live-Action TV

Both averted and played with in The Vicar of Dibley. The title character is obviously well-aware of what Easter actually means, but one of her parishoners (a Cloudcuckoolander) was never told the truth about the Easter Bunny. When the old woman who usually filled this role dies, the vicar has a lot of explaining to do.
One of the "Two A-Holes" skits on Saturday Night Live featured the title characters in a live nativity scene. At one point, the female a-hole picks up the baby Jesus doll and declares, "This baby doesn't look like Santa."

Newspaper Comics

Semi-averted in FoxTrot. Commercial aspects of both Easter and (especially) Christmas are generally predominant, but the family is occasionally shown to go to church on those days. One memorable instance after Jason exults at length about his new, violent video game: "This is what Christmas is all about. You know, besides all that other stuff."
Andy: Jason and I will be at church, if anyone needs us.
Jason: Mom! What makes you think they're even open today?!
The Christmas strips of Calvin and Hobbes concentrate on Calvin's attempts to behave so that he gets all the presents he asked for. One strip has Calvin doubting the existence of Santa Claus, and then Hobbes asks:
Hobbes: Isn't this a religious holiday?
Calvin: Yeah, but actually, I've got the same questions about God.

Webcomics

When Bun-Bun sets out to become the King of All Holidays in Sluggy Freelance, he has to kill the previous leaders of the holidays to gain their titles and powers. To gain control of Christmas and Easter, he kills Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny, not Jesus.
- Well, Bun-Bun or not, Jesus probably would've kicked his ass, so...

Western Animation

The Peanuts special It's the Easter Beagle, Charlie Brown is an actual Easter example. A Charlie Brown Christmas nicely subverts this: Snoopy is only concerned with winning a house decoration contest, Lucy is more concerned with getting a nice tree than with the Christmas pageant, and Charlie angsts about how commercialized Christmas has become (in The Sixties, mind you). Later on, Linus reminds the whole gang about the holiday's true meaning by reciting part of the second chapter of Luke, in which the shepherds learn of Jesus's birth. This is actually what makes the show a classic — by going back to the real meaning of Christmas, it stood out in an increasingly commercialized world.
- Ironically, it's now possible to decorate your house entirely with Peanuts-themed Christmas merchandise, including an entire line of plastic figures recreating the deeply spiritual moments of the special, and even a plastic replica of the tree that Charlie Brown picked out specifically because it was the only real tree in the lot.
- The later Christmas-set Peanuts specials of The Nineties and the Turn of the Millennium are more focused on gift-giving, general winter activities, etc., but do acknowledge the religious side of the holiday. Two of them have the characters participating in Nativity plays/assemblies, and Sally wants to know who "the star" was that the Wise Men followed in Charlie Brown's Christmas Tales.
The Fairly OddParents paint the Easter Bunny as a disgruntled "hard-boiled" figure who is envious of the big guy's popularity.
- As in Jesus?
South Park plays this straight by making Mr. Hanky the Christmas Poo, a Christmas Spirit in the vein of Frosty the Snowman. There is an Easter Episode wherein the secret message behind the Easter Bunny, hidden from you by the eeevul Vatican, is uncovered.
- Actually averted in the shorts thet preceeded the actual show, where Santa Claus and Jesus try to kill each other over who's the real Christmas deity, only to be presented with the message of what Christmas is about. Similarly, a couple of episodes in the main series do alude to the schism between religious Christmas and commercial Christmas.
In Elmo Saves Christmas, the Easter Bunny sells "Christmas Easter Eggs for Easter". There's nothing religious about any of the episode, whether Christmas or Easter.
The Life and Times of Juniper Lee featured "Juniper's Egg-Cellent Adventure". Here Easter is all about eggs.
In The Nightmare Before Christmas, all the holidays are in their secular forms, though, interestingly, Jack does refer to God offhandedly twice in "Poor Jack".
In the Futurama universe, Christmas (pronounced X-Mas) is less about religion and more about finding a good hiding spot from the killer robotic Santa who judges everyone to be naughty due to his standards being set too high.
Rugrats' first Christmas special does this, focusing on Santa, but the second averts it: the babies stumble across a nativity scene and don't understand what it is, but decide to give presents to the baby Jesus. (Of course, they never refer to him or the scene by name, so arguably this is more Playing with a Trope.)
- Also Played With during the show's Passover and Hanukkah episodes: the Biblical stories are recounted, but God is never directly mentioned, even though the various miracles occur. (Non-fatally, in the Passover example—a mysterious force is going to "take away" the firstborn.) There was a normal episode of the show based on Noah's Ark that did the same thing, claiming that Noah was just "told by the Heavens" (or something) of the coming Flood.
On Family Guy, when Lois discovers that she's Jewish and wants to put on a seder, Peter objects because it's Easter.
"In this house we believe in the Easter Bunny! He died for our sins in that helicopter crash..."

Real Life

Japan at large practices the commercial holiday of Christmas, but only 2 percent of the population is Christian. Of course, they practice it somewhat differently than everyone else; one of their Christmas Traditions is eating Kentucky Fried Chicken.
- Urban Legend has it that the image of Santa Claus nailed to a cross, like that depicted by Robert Cenedella, has been witnessed in Japan at Christmastime.
- KFC is also treated as something of a "special event" delicacy in Japan.

Mrs. Claus

Christmas Tropes

Santa's Existence Clause

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