Santa Claus, You're a Bad Role Model for Kids!

Dec. 23, 2009— -- It had to come someday. Mounting evidence shows that the ultimate corrupter of our young people is a slovenly, brandy-swilling, disease-carrying fat old guy named Santa.

Or so writes Nathan J. Grills, a public health fellow at Monash University in Melbourne, Australia, in the current issue of the British Medical Journal.

Grills -- with tongue firmly placed in cheek -- says that Santa would be a lot more helpful if he pried his overweight rear end off his sled and walked instead.

It may sound a bit on the silly side, but Grills has found a receptive audience. When I Googled "Santa should walk" after reading Grills' treatise, I found 25,800,000 hits.

And Grills backs up his conclusions with field experience. He confesses to having played Santa himself, where he was exposed to all sorts of diseases borne by kids who just wanted to kiss his cheeks.

"I was kissed and hugged by snotty nosed kids at each performance and was never offered alcohol swabs to wipe my rosy cheeks between clients," he writes. Thus, he became a potential carrier of diseases that could infect hundreds of kids, although not on the scale of the real Santa, who has to visit billions of homes around the globe in a single evening.

Grills' humorous essay is not intended entirely to be entertaining. Behind his unflattering portrait of Santa lies a well known truth: Image really does matter. And that is especially significant for children.

He cites other research showing that Santa is the most recognized fictional figure among American children, just barely beating out Ronald McDonald. So, before we let our children emulate this "rotund sedentary image" who has obviously had too many cookies, maybe it's worth taking a look at Grills' argument.