The Man in Red...

I have an unashamed, irrepressible fondness for Santa Claus. Not the rushed shopping-centre version or the slightly lopsided inflatable that wheezes on a suburban lawn — though, truth be told, even those make me grin. It’s something deeper. Whenever I spot him — strolling past, perched in a grotto, waving from the back of a ute — my whole self lights up. There’s a kind of inner bell that rings, clear and bright, and it shows up on my face before I can think to hide it.

People sometimes assume it’s nostalgia or whimsy. But for me, it reaches back further: to St Nicholas, the man behind the myth. A man whose generosity wasn’t performative but prayer-shaped. Someone whose instinct was to see those at the edges, to lift burdens quietly, to give not out of surplus but compassion. A man who loved others because he lived steeped in the love of God.

When I see Santa, I’m not actually seeing a jolly character in red. I’m glimpsing the echo of a person who allowed God’s heart to shape his own — and, more than that, I feel I’m catching a faint shimmer of the God who delights in giving, who surprises, who steps toward us with joy. A God who fills ordinary things with extraordinary warmth and wonder.

Christmas is full of that glow. The stories, the lights, the generosity, the quiet moments of being seen — they’re all fragments of the real wonder at the centre: God coming close, reshaping the world with love.

Maybe that’s why I can’t help the gleeful grin. When Santa appears, I see a hint of someone who believed that God’s love was worth imitating.  I see the kind of wonder that wakes in us as children — and I realise it’s the same wonder that stirs when we glimpse God’s goodness. I love to walk in that wonder, letting His love spill through the cracks and corners of ordinary life.

So yes — I love Santa Claus. And perhaps it’s because, beneath the velvet and the bells, I can still hear St Nicholas whispering through the centuries: See people. Love them well. Let generosity carry the warmth of God.

And that feels like a story worth celebrating every December.